You should check out Are Girl Scout Cookies Deliciously Evil?, a strange and interesting homebrew analysis of the famous Girl Scout Cookies fundraiser.

The author notes the following. In 1992, a box of cookies cost $2. In 2011, they cost $4. I quote: "Total inflation from 1992–2011 was 57%, but the price increased 100%. From 2006–2011, annual US inflation was close to 1% over that period and the net inflation was 9.25%; ); there was a 14% price increase. Perhaps the Girl Scout leadership is to blame."

The analysis is interesting, and well worth a read, for at least two reasons:

1. The working hypothesis is that the Girl Scouts are evil.
2. It's an interesting case study in evaluating charities on your own.

Spoiler alert: It looks like the local Girl Scout councils, rather than the national leadership, are probably to blame.

Quoting him at length:

Digital media expands. It's not like paper, it can get bigger.

As digital marketers seek to increase profits, they almost always make the same mistake. They continue to add more clutter, messaging and offers, because, hey, it's free.

One more link, one more banner, one more side deal on the Groupon page.

Economics tells us that the right thing to do is run the factory until the last item produced is being sold at marginal cost. In other words, keep adding until it doesn't work any more.

In fact, human behavior tells us that this is a more permanent effect than we realize. Once you overload the user, you train them not to pay attention. More clutter isn't free. In fact, more clutter is a permanent shift, a desensitization to all the information, not just the last bit.

And it's hard to go backward.

More is not always better. In fact, more is almost never better.

Now we know what Willy Loman sold.*

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant's argument for belief in God is that we must represent the highest good as a state of affairs in which everyone is happy because they are virtuous (5:113–114, 124). But neither the laws of nature nor our best efforts can guarantee that happiness will result from virtue. Therefore, Kant thought, we must conclude that the highest good is impossible -- and thereby fail to be motivated to virtue -- unless we postulate "the existence of a cause of nature, distinct from nature, which contains the ground of this connection, namely the exact correspondence of happiness with morality" (5:125), i.e. unless we posit the existence of God (cf. Rohlf, SEP).

As far as I'm concerned, meditation of this kind is prompted by the image above.

Famously, R. Buckminster Fuller hoped that the geodesic dome would help address the postwar housing crisis: geodesic homes are extremely strong for their weight, their "omnitriangulated" surfaces provide an inherently stable structure, and spheres enclose the greatest volume for the least surface area.

Turns out, there are some serious problems with Geodesic homes. But suppose there weren't. What was the likelihood that the door-to-door salesman model would correctly apportion reward (i.e. sell homes) to virtue? Not much, it seems to me. A thought, then, for Monday: successful marketing is the practical postulate of all designers.

Consider, finally, that in adopting this postulate, we are motivated to get on with being virtuous.

* Thanks to Megan for pointing out this link, for the leading thought, and the conversation.

This past April, the Journal of Marketing Communications published a study that suggests that men with facial hair were perceived as more credible than men who were clean shaven when endorsing products.

Apparently, bearded men were seen to have "more expertise" and to be "more trustworthy" than the un-bearded men. Important clarification: the study looked only at "neat" beards of medium length. Read more.

Beard Font by Tim Yarzhombeck, via.

The "Honest Store" promotion is pretty simple: Honest Tea (owned in largest part by Coca-Cola) set up unmanned kiosks in central city locations, offering their wares at an indicated price of a dollar a bottle. Of course, kiosks unmanned, payment was on the honor system. The catch, as you might expect, was that each kiosk was equipped with hidden cameras to decide which big-city folk are honest enough to cough up for their bottle.

Via NBC Chicago

How "honest" were people? The tallies vary from 75% (Los Angeles) to 93.3% (Boston), with New York and Atlanta falling between at 89%, and DC a nearby second-place at 93%.

We, at DLB, have got a few questions about this promotional scheme. First of all, it seems clear enough that what's being tested here isn't necessarily how honest people are, but — just as likely — people's wherewithal. Nobody in their right mind should be able to see an unmanned corporate kiosk in the age of social media without asking herself what the catch is. I'm inclined to think that the results of this experiment are just as germane to the claim that the citizens of Boston deliberate correctly at 93.3% as they are to the claim that the citizens of Boston act honestly at a rate of 93.3%.

But, esoteric and pragmatic worries to one side, I think the real question is this one: how honest is the honest store? Doesn't it strike a dubious note to test honesty with hidden cameras? Does tricking people into being dishonest for the sake of a promotion undermine the moral authority of the experimenters?

For the record, finally, all proceeds of the Honest Tea Honest Store social experiment are being donated to City Year, a non-profit organization that "unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service" in metropolitan areas. So, on the face of it, that seems good. But, of course, and with Milton Glaser (cf. §2) now, "C'mon!"

Another hot tip from Megan this week alerted us to this post about French Elle's First "Curvy" Issue. I quote:

Plus-size model Tara Lynn nabbed the cover and more than 20 editorial pages in the April issue of Elle France. Is this proof that fashion might set its parameters for acceptable female beauty a little wider, or just a fad?

This is an interesting moment, to me, because, no doubt, the introduction of a different body type into the world of fashion is not motivated purely by the editors' interest in the problems caused by unrealistic body image in fashion marketing. Rather, it seems to me more likely that people are just getting sick of looking of a certain body type. And not sick of it like they're sick of the evening news' fear-mongering (i.e. where it causes them a kind of moral revulsion). Sick of it like they get sick of a certain color scheme (i.e. it's not that there is anything wrong with some color scheme per se, people just get overexposed to it).

It's interesting to imagine that the voracious consumer appetite for newness could overturn unethical design and marketing practices, not because they are unethical, but just because they are yesterday's news.

We were alerted this week (thanks Megan) to an interesting case of marketing/media ethics.

On the night of October 21st last year, Real Madrid played AC Milan in an important Champions League match. Heineken (under guidance of advertising agency JWT Milan, Italy) gave university professors, girlfriends, and various media outlets (hereafter, the foils) tickets to a classical music and poetry a concert that night. The foils, quite naturally, asked or required their students, boyfriends and employees (hereafter, the pawns) to go to the concert. Naturally, many of the pawns were nonplussed. Their (quite strong) preference was to watch Real Madrid/AC Milan, not to attend what they saw as a boring concert. Here's what happened.

Now ask yourself, what is the message to the pawns (the target market) here? I think it has to be this: "Heineken knows you better, and looks out for your interests better, than your professors, girlfriends, wives, and bosses. When your work, education, and family stand in the way of your happiness, count on the Heineken brand to save you."

That, by my lights, is a little perturbing.

I love 826 Valencia. Here are a few samples from their gallery of signs, which marketing idea I also love. Good copy, clean typography. Hallelujah.