Good advice.

How affective would this spot be without the song? On whatever project, campaign or strategy you are working on, how can you tweak it to connect with people emotionally? Music is one of the best ways to do this.

A great video of a magician explaining the most important thing in a good magic trick, user experience design and marketing – empathy! Watch it just for the magic, it’s a great video!

Google had a super-bowl commercial for the first time.  You know, just in case you had not heard of them.  If you missed any of the others, you can see all the super bowl commercials here.  Oh yea, and congrats to the Saints.

Watch at least the first 30 seconds of this video (on YouTube).  You won’t be disappointed.

Great note over at Boing Boing today about Russell Davies’ talk at Playful and “pretending objects”.  There is a fine balance in product design between allowing the user to “pretend” (so they buy your product) and making them feel stupid (when they see through to your lie and move on).

A very well-made video ad for the new humanitarian group Nulu International.  I love the graphic-novel style graphics.  The whole thing is gripping.  Reminds me of the last season of 24 where Bauer becomes an aid worker in Africa to escape the stress of fighting terrorism. (Yea, I know I just ruined the serious moment.  Sorry.)

The extent to which we are all being brainwashed is pretty severe.

Found by @beckybratu and Gawker

If you want people to believe something about you, you need to be prepared to say it over and over again.  When people hear something enough, they start to believe it.

Want people to remember your idea, message or product?  Put it in a story.  Remember middle school when you learned about the parts of a story?  The central character.  The conflict.  The rising action.  The resolution -  Just like that.  If you can put your idea in to a story where I cheer for the hero and anticipate the resolution of a problem – I’ll remember whatever you are trying to tell me.  Bonus points if the story is emotional (see above video).

The current Geico “so easy a caveman could do it” ads out right now are freaking brilliant.  They take a simple idea (Geico is easy) and weave it in to a story (cavemen facing social bigotry) with main characters you want to cheer for.  Everyone remembers these ads.  And because the idea is (1) simple and (2) central to the story – everyone remembers that Geico is Easy.

Sell your idea with a story.

[Video found via AdFreak.com]