Advertising Is Magic. Psychology Today

Psychology Today has an interesting story on the power of brands and advertising. Here it is in full.
In the June issue of Psychology Today, we covered a paper from the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrating how the display of brands automatically affects our behavior. In the studies, [...]

Hocus Focus Groups

Focus group hypnosis is increasingly becoming a “secret weapon” for Fortune 500 companies and ad agencies. As Euro RSCG Worldwide, New York and Volvo did recently. In focus group after focus group, participants say the same thing. That Volvo equals safety. But in an experimental group, members were asked to test-drive the car. Immediately afterwards [...]

Sadness And Money

We’ve all heard about retail therapy working wonderfully, especially for women. So this CNN report that talks about people spending much more on shopping when they are sad and self-absorbed should have actually come as no surprise. Researchers from 4 top US universities – Stanford, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Harvard revealed that study participants who [...]

The thing with genius

Is creativity all about genius, or harnessing the collective skills of many seemingly ‘ordinary’ people. Malcolm Gladwell hypothesis. Russell Davies corroborates.

The Psychology Of Powerpoint

We seem to love psychology. After the psychology of banner advertising, the psychology of price, comes the psychology of Powerpoint. Presentation Zen writes about Stephen Kosslyn’s new book, Clear and to the point: 8 psychological principles for compelling Powerpoint Presentations. The book contains serious advice as it comes to you not from a casual observer [...]

Busting Silos

Adage writes about a new initiative from the media handlers at Group M, working on the Ford account. In an effort to get people within different groups to collaborate and work together, the CEO of Group M, Phil Cowdell hired a behavioral psychologist. Mr. Cowdell had the onerous task of getting media, researchers and strategists [...]

What Women Want

BusinessWeek magazine recently looked at romance related marketing and found it seriously out of sync with the women of today. The role of women in society, the magazine feels, is evolving: They’re now ambitious, equal contributors in areas guys used to dominate, including school, sports, work, and politics (Vote Hillary!) What do modern girls want? [...]

Height of Thinking

If the glass ceiling is the metaphor for stifling your career growth, a recent study at the University of Minnesota suggests that ceiling height could affect other areas of your work life, like problem-solving skills and behavior. According to scientists from University of Minnesota and as reported in Live Science, when people are in a [...]

Picture Think

Daniel Mejia is a creative guy yearning to be a planner. We stumbled upon his blog looking for a place to understand what’s happening in the Latin American ad scene. Rather than give you the comings and goings on in South America, Daniel’s English blog is the place to go for deep and fundamental understanding [...]

The Psychology of Banner Advertising

The Journal of Consumer Research tries to debunk the theory that banner ads don’t work, until someone actually clicks on them. In a piece of research that explores the exposure effect of banner ads, it concluded that repeated exposure to a product via banner ads generates a positive feeling towards that product. There have [...]