Loose lips bring tips…

I’m the proud blogmother of Sandy Beckwith’s new blog, Build Buzz. After guest blogging over here last month, Sandy took the plunge and jumped into her own blog, which offers “tips, observations and advice about publicity for authors, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses.” Obviously a woman of many talents.

People in NYC are F-I-T. New Yorkers are living longer than those in other US cities — possibly from a combination of their walking lifestyle, city bans on smoking and trans-fats, and a decrease in deaths from homicide, AIDS and drugs. Cancer and cardiac arrest are down too. The average New Yorker is 10 lbs lighter than the average American. And you wondered why they call it the Big Apple?

Emily Sellars at Buy the Change You Want to See in the World (such a perfect title for what she writes about) makes a good case for cutting food aid to the world’s poor. She explains that donated food from developed countries ends up lowering the food prices in a developing country and hurting local farmers. By undermining the market, the system creates continued dependence on the food aid and inefficiently spent funds, which could be used to instead support the local farmers. It’s the old “give a man a fish vs. teach him to fish” debate.

It’s all in how you frame it… Two University of Central Florida physics professors, tired of science-deficient students who think the subject is too scary and difficult, have figured out how to get them excited about learning basic physics. They created a course known as “Physics in Film,” now one of the most popular classes on campus. Using movies like Speed, Superman and Spiderman 2 that illustrate or defy key physics concepts, the class dissects the scenes and learn the real laws of physics. Just like in social marketing, it’s all about figuring out what your audience is interested in, and tying your issue to that.

Seth Godin had an excellent post on defining your competition by figuring out what the opposite of your product is. Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts. Rush Limbaugh vs. Al Franken. So let’s try some social marketing products: fresh fruit vs. Cheetos, vegetables vs. french fries, colonoscopies vs. Pepto Bismol, bike helmets vs. baseball caps, immunizations vs. prayers… It’s not quite so clear cut, is it?

What would a city without advertising look like? São Paulo is finding out. Since January 1, 2007, the city has been living under a law that bans all advertising, including billboards, fliers, neon signs, and electronic panels. The city is being newly rediscovered as the ubiquitous billboards are taken down and the cityscape emerges. The president of the City Council was quoted as saying, “what we are aiming for is a complete change of culture.” I hope someone is following this case study and will eventually report how the city and its residents were transformed by the change.

Justice Louis Brandeis said, “There is no great writing, only great rewriting.” With that in mind, I take comfort in the fact that this little video reminded me an awful lot of my own writing process.

I’ve just added a new widget on the sidebar to the right (RSS subscribers go here) that shows what books I’m reading right now. I’ve joined Shelfari, which is an online social network for readers. It’s such an obvious niche for a social network, given that if you have read some of the same books as someone else, you would probably like the other things they’ve read. So mine will probably tend toward a mix of sci-fi and social marketing, and I will try to keep it updated. If you have books to recommend, please do!

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The Tip Jar – 8/20/07