I'm oxfami$hed, readers:
"In ads, punctuation can make a point" by Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff March 05, 2015
When it comes to advertising and urging people to buy a product, is it more effective for a company to make a statement or to raise a question?
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“It’s pretty crazy when you think about it,” said Henrik Hagtvedt, a professor at BC’s Carroll School of Management. “It’s just a question or a period, and it can make people buy more or less.”
Hagtvedt’s study, to be published later this year in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, found that statements work best in intense environments in which potential buyers get hit with loud music and a barrage of images, such as during a basketball game or while they are watching an action movie.
Maybe I will get some work done during tournament.
In calmer situations with more soothing music, such as while watching a documentary, consumers are willing to ponder a question and are more likely to buy a brand that asks their opinion.
It all comes down to primal reactions, Hagtvedt said. The earliest ancestors of the modern consumer wanted clear instructions from their families and tribesmen when they were under stress or their lives were threatened. In calmer situations, they were more likely to explore or satisfy their curiosity.
That's how false flags drive us to war.
“We tend to respond to stimuli and environment in ways that have been molded by thousands and millions of years of evolution,” he said.
How amazing to see them describe how the global elite have refined the art of rule.
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Eat it up, readers:
Hagtvedt found that when consumers were more excited, either by an image or by music, they were more likely to buy the product presented as a statement.
That explains my lack of consumer purchases.
Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign used a simple statement along with images of people running, climbing and pushing their physical limits to sell billions of dollars’ worth of athletic gear. The slogan, launched in 1988 and still in use, was named one of the most memorable branding efforts of the last century by Advertising Age, a trade journal. The ad seems to prove Hagtvedt’s idea that a direct message is best in an intense environment.
On the other side of the punctuation debate is “Got Milk?” from the Milk Processor Education Program’s advertising campaign, Hagtvedt said. The question makes you stop, look, and consider what is being sold, he said.
The ads, which were splashed across magazine pages, featured straight-on photos of athletes and celebrities with milk mustaches. The slogan, which was retired last year, lent an aura of cool to the refrigerator staple.
Other companies have also gone the rhetorical route, from Capital One’s “What’s in your wallet?” to “Where’s the beef?” from Wendy’s, the fast-food chain.
Capital one's fingers, for starters.
Advertising is about connecting with people, said Alyssa Toro, a senior partner and chief creative officer at Connelly Partners, a Boston ad agency, and questions can help a company do that by engaging consumers, making them feel that their answers matter.
Questions are particularly effective on social media, where people look to connect with each other and exchange ideas by hitting a “like” button or sharing a story or a comment, she said. Increasingly, companies ask consumers on social media what they think about products or what they want, she said.
Or set up fake positive review sites.
“It’s an instant invitation for the customer,” Toro said of such questions. “If they make a definitive statement, they are leading the customer, and that’s not showing empathy.”
But Gary Greenberg, executive vice president and chief creative officer at Allen & Gerritsen in Boston, said lots of different elements go into making a successful brand campaign, from capturing a cultural moment to understanding consumer demographics. It isn’t simply about whether you put a period or a question mark at the end of a sentence.
“You can’t really reduce what we do to a science, because it’s anything but,” Greenberg said. “Why do I feel good about doing business with this brand? That’s the magic dust. That’s what every brand is looking for.”
Then why is so much money poured into it if it is not a $cience?
Btw, propagandizing the masses has been science forever.
Still, Hagtvedt said that he hopes his research gets the advertising agencies thinking about how they make their pitches to consumers, and under what circumstances.
For example, advertising a toy with a question mark during the frenzied holiday season would probably confuse buyers — and turn them off....
We had anything but de$pite the adverti$ing, and I'm turned off to this piece. Sorry.
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I've got a piece of punctuation for them!
Related: Lighter launches a better, more affordable way to eat healthy
Maybe Remy’s for lunch, kids?
"Psychology on order: How restaurants get you to spend more" by Candice Choi, Associated Press March 05, 2015
NEW YORK — You may think you’re immune to transparent sales pitches like ‘‘Do you want fries with that?’’ But the tactics restaurants use to nudge you into spending a little extra may be subtler than you realize. Here’s a look at a few ways companies get you to spend (and eat) more than you intended.
No worries about obesity there.
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Controlling the choices — Sometimes the choices available will push people to spend more.
Sonic, for instance, used to offer two sizes for its shakes: a 14-ounce ‘‘regular’’ and a 20-ounce ‘‘large.’’ In 2012, the drive-in chain revamped sizes; the ‘‘regular’’ became a ‘‘small’’ and the ‘‘large’’ became a ‘‘regular.’’
It then added a new 32-ounce ‘‘large” and a 10-ounce ‘‘mini.’’ So the people who tend to automatically opt for a ‘‘large’’ were shifted up to a bigger, pricier size.
How deceptive!
That's the ethics of AmeriKan bu$ine$$ these days?
Drinks are a particularly ripe area for what’s known in the industry as ‘‘upselling,’’ because people usually don’t pay as much attention to drink prices as they do to prices on main dishes, said Kit Yarrow, a professor of consumer psychology at Golden Gate University and the author of ‘‘Decoding the New Consumer Mind.’’
And I'll bet it's all sodas, too!
Paying 25 cents more for a bigger soda or fries seems like a no-brainer to most people, even if they would have been content with the smaller portion.
‘‘Consumers really do order much more food than they need, because it seems like a value to them,’’ Yarrow said.
Hey, it's all a business.
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What’s next — In the future, that drive-through menu board might just try to read your mind. Or at least predict what you, in particular, might be tempted by.
Sonic’s chief executive, Cliff Hudson, has said the chain is working on ways to have digital menu boards feature items based on the particular customer.
The tailored offerings would be possible over time with the help of a mobile app that is set to debut this spring and would help the company keep track of what people like to order....
I think I'll pass on the fast food.
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I always like a doughnut with my morning coffee (it's my curse, readers):
"Netanyahu’s new coalition faces multi front challenges; Issues over Iran nuclear talks, West Bank await" by William Booth, Washington Post March 19, 2015
TEL AVIV — At his victory celebration early Wednesday, supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to chant, ‘‘You are the magician!’’
After a resounding clutch-time comeback in Israel’s parliamentary elections, Netanyahu is poised to serve a record fourth term as prime minister. If he makes it through the full four-year term, his time in office could exceed that of Israel’s longest-serving leader, the country’s founder, David Ben-Gurion.
Netanyahu will form his next government after a bruising campaign that exposed him to charges of racism and hysteria, for his complaint that droves of Arab Israeli citizens were voting and his warning that his opponents would welcome the militant Islamist group Hamas to the edges of Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu and his Likud party began negotiating a new coalition government, which will probably be buttressed by nationalists, religious Zionists, populist former Likudniks, the pro-settlement camp, and two religious parties that represent ultra-Orthodox Jews and are overseen by powerful rabbis.
Talk about an EXTREMIST GOVERNMENT!!
But the next Netanyahu government will face a host of challenges at home, on its borders, and abroad.
On Monday, in the heat of the campaign, Netanyahu made the sensational promise that he would not support the creation of a Palestinian state as long as he was prime minister, a stunning reversal of his earlier stance supporting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
His announcement convinced many Netanyahu skeptics that this has been the prime minister’s true position all along and that he has wasted American time and patience by pretending to endorse two states.
The critics were right, and it wasn't a waste of time. Israel seized more land in the interim.
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In Europe, leaders frustrated by more than four decades of military occupation in the West Bank and the repeated failures of peace talks have begun to openly debate employing sanctions against Israel to push for a sovereign Palestinian state, which Netanyahu now vows he would never allow.
More trouble — in the guise of resolutions and condemnations of Israel’s human rights record — could await Netanyahu in the international community....
Then prepare thyselves for more false flag terror attacks and staged and scripted productions claiming to be real.
Reacting to Netanyahu’s win, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah promised Wednesday to go to the International Criminal Court at The Hague on April 1 to press war crimes charges against Israeli soldiers and leaders, focusing on the civilian deaths during the 50-day war in Gaza during the summer and the continued construction of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
For his part, Netanyahu has said in the past that it is war crimes and terror attacks by Hamas that the United Nations should be condemning.
The election was closely watched in Washington, where relations are strained between Netanyahu and the White House after the prime minister gave a speech to Congress two weeks ago opposing the Obama administration’s possible deal with Iran to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program.
Netanyahu, who has made the fight against a nuclear Iran the centerpiece of his foreign policy, will probably side with congressional Republicans again and clash with President Obama if Kerry secures what the prime minister considers ‘‘a bad deal.’’
In Lausanne, Switzerland, where Iran and the United States are holding nuclear talks, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, described Netanyahu’s victory as a step backward for Israel and the region.
Netanyahu will probably not care what the Iranians say. He has called Iran’s leaders ‘‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’’ and said they answer not to their citizens but to Holocaust-denying ayatollahs committed to Israel’s annihilation.
That's all such bullsh*t and is really becoming intolerable coming from that disgusting excuse for a human being.
Kerry called Netanyahu on Wednesday morning to congratulate him.
Meaning all the propaganda pre$$ reporting of a rift is a $hit-$how fooley!
Israeli news media spent the day speculating on when Obama would phone. Prime Ministers Stephen Harper of Canada and David Cameron of Britain placed calls to Netanyahu on Wednesday.
Yes, they must all pay homage to their master!
Netanyahu and Likud took 30 seats in the 120-seat Parliament, against the 24 forecast for the center-left Zionist Union alliance of Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog and his running mate, former peace negotiator Tzipi Livni.
OMG! It was an over-the-top theft!
Netanyahu’s victory represents a crushing defeat for his challengers, who believed themselves so close to a win, based on opinion surveys.
It's a PERMANENT OPPOSITION NOW because if they can't prevent a theft of this vote....
Herzog conceded the election in a telephone call to Netanyahu on Wednesday morning and later said that he would most likely focus on leading the opposition in Parliament.
That is where my printed piece ended.
‘‘I wished him luck, but let it be clear: The problems are the same problems, nothing has changed,’’ Herzog told reporters.
Herzog will be joined in the opposition by politicians from the Joint List of Arab parties, which won 14 seats, making it the third-largest vote-getter. Arabs represent about 20 percent of Israel’s population.
As polls ahead of the vote showed Likud trailing the Zionist Union, the prime minister warned that he and his party were ‘‘in real danger,’’ that the left was about to win and to give away ‘‘land for peace’’ and ‘‘divide’’ Jerusalem; that unnamed ‘‘foreign powers’’ were pouring millions of dollars into a campaign against him; that Arab Israeli citizens were going to the polls ‘‘in droves,’’ bused by nongovernmental organizations dedicated to his downfall.
Yeah, AIPAC, and only AIPAC, should be allowed to do that!
Netanyahu also promised that there would be ‘‘no concessions’’ to the Palestinians and ‘‘no withdrawals’’ from the West Bank during his watch. He appeared Monday at the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in East Jerusalem to highlight his commitment to continued construction. Europe and the United Nations say that the settlements in Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. Israel disputes this.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in the United States and a major leader of American Jewry, condemned Netanyahu’s last-ditch tactics as ‘‘a naked appeal to his hard-right bases’ fears rather than their hopes.’’
Whatever one calls it, it appears to have worked. Avi Degani, a leading Israeli pollster and president of the Geocartography Knowledge Group, said Wednesday that the last opinion polls showing a possible Likud loss not only motivated Netanyahu but also caused panic among reluctant voters on the right, pushing them to vote for Likud at the last minute out of fear that the left wing would take over.
Gil Hoffman, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, said Netanyahu mobilized voters from what he called ‘‘the second Israel,’’ who came out to protect Israel from the left, from Iran and what they perceive as a hostile international community.
In an editorial titled ‘‘King Bibi and his divided people,’’ David Horovitz, the founding editor of the Times of Israel news website, called Netanyahu ‘‘a political tactician in a different league from his rivals.’’
‘‘But amid the euphoria of victory, and the majority’s reaffirmation of faith in his leadership, will he take heed of the fact that a substantial proportion of the electorate is as shocked and horrified by Tuesday’s results as he and his supporters are shocked and delighted?’’ Horovitz asked.
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Nice to get the CIA's take on events, huh?
"Next 2 years pose friction for US-Israel ties" by Steven Mufson, Washington Post March 19, 2015
Pfffft!
WASHINGTON — Aside from President Vladimir Putin of Russia, few foreign leaders so brazenly stand up to President Obama.
He has reappeared, yeah.
In the past, Israeli leaders who risked damaging the country’s most important relationship, that with Washington, tended to pay a price. In 1991, when then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir opposed Madrid peace talks, President George H.W. Bush held back loan guarantees to help absorb immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Shamir gave in, but his government soon collapsed.
That's why Clinton was "elected."
This time, however, Netanyahu was not hurt by his personal and substantive conflicts with the US president.
Let me tell you something....
‘‘While the United States is loved and beloved in Israel, President Obama is not,’’ said Robert Danin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Where do US-Israeli relations go from here?
No change.
Most analysts say that Obama and Netanyahu will seek to play down the friction between them and point to areas of continuing cooperation on military and economic issues. ‘‘Both sides are going to want to turn down the rhetoric,’’ Danin said....
Toldja.
The first substantive test could come as early as this month, when the United States hopes that it can finish hammering out the framework of an agreement with Iran. Netanyahu strongly warned against making a ‘‘bad deal’’ during his address to a joint meeting of Congress, an appearance arranged by GOP congressional leaders and criticized by the Obama administration.
In following up on that, it seems that the ridiculousness is being put to test as the deadline approaches and with the issues largely settled --even as Iran confronts US over the partisanship and political paralysis that becomes our own worst enemy as we seek to maintain the lead global position of power that has served us, and the world, so well for so long.
I think the world might have a different perspective on that, particularly the people who have suffered millions of deaths at the hands of the U.S. government and its wars based on lies.
If a deal is reached and does not pass muster with Netanyahu, he is likely to work with congressional Republicans to try to scuttle the accord.
That's treasonous!
The second test — talks with Palestinians — could be even more difficult. In his September 2013 address to the United Nations, Obama hailed signs of hope. Today, the signals couldn’t differ more.
Why?
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How about that smirk, huh?
Related: Netanyahu Wins Big -- But At What Cost?
Now this: Netanyahu
