Exploring the Art & Science of Marketing
Archive for March, 2006
The Science of prayer
Mar 30th
There isn’t a science to prayer in my life. How about yours?
Study fails to show healing power of prayer
Isn’t the very premise of prayer that it isn’t scientific? So, what will a scientific study prove? The funny part to me is that they even included a placebo of sorts as you will read in the third paragraph.
What is their conclusion? You could sum it up like this . . . “Well, we had a couple of guys pray for you while you were under the knife, and you didn’t get better, so our statistics say that prayer doesn’t heal . . . at least that’s what the study shows.”
“A study of more than 1,800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery has failed to show that prayers specially organized for their recovery had any impact, researchers said on Thursday.
In fact, the study found some of the patients who knew they were being prayed for did worse than others who were only told they might be prayed for — though those who did the study said they could not explain why.
The patients in the study at six U.S. hospitals included 604 who were actually prayed for after being told they might or might not be; another 597 patients who were not prayed for after being told they might or might not be; and a group of 601 who were prayed for and told they would be the subject of such prayer.”
You don’t get the caveat until the end of the story, so that’s where I put it in my post.
“Private or family prayer is widely believed to influence recovery from illness, and the results of this study do not challenge this belief,” the report concluded.”
Risk or Homerun?
Mar 29th
“The greatest risk facing MySpace is what boyd describes as “moral panic” — a growing backlash from parents, teachers, religious leaders and law enforcement officials, along with some media outlets. They warn the site is an inappropriate and potentially dangerous place for teens to hang out. While many MySpace users are in their 20s, people as young as 14 are permitted to sign on.” – via Fortune.com
Most marketing/publicists or even CEO-types that I know would say that this is actually one of mySpace’s greatest opportunities. When something becomes taboo, it becomes even more popular. In fact, I have done work for a company where part of their strategy was to get the product banned in schools.
To make good men better
Mar 29th
This talk has got to be my favorite talk I have heard in a long time.
It’s called “In the Strength of the Lord” by a man named David Bednar. He was the president of the junior college I attended in South East Idaho.
He is now one of the leader’s of the LDS church. Here is an excerpt . . . “The purpose of the gospel is . . . to make bad men good and good men better, and to change human nature.”
Daily bread
Mar 28th
Seth Godin has an interesing post about deceit and bread that reminded me of my wife. When we go to the grocery store, I always teach her about marketing tricks, and she always teaches me about healthy foods, especially breads.
She is a great wife.
Society has made me rich
Mar 28th
“Society has made me rich. If I died today, 99.5 percent of my wealth would go to charity. There are many problems I want to address. I’m fortunate to have been born here. It was the right time and the right place for me.” – Warren Buffett
Something tells me that Warren Buffett lives life richly, and I’m not referring to money.
Draper Utah Home Buying
Mar 27th
I thought I would conduct a test to see how hard it would be to get listed in the search engines for the term Draper Utah Real Estate. There we go.
I currently own two homes in Draper and am looking for others. I used a real estate agent for my first home, but I didn’t use an agent on my second home, which I bought in Suncrest.
Conducting the Test
Why would I do something like this? I have always felt that few real estate agents do a very good job of using the Internet to market themselves. I did some loose research and found that there are a fairly large number of searches that occur each month for terms related to real estate in Utah.
If you’re going to San Francisco
Mar 23rd
Take more photos . . . they were taken with a camera phone.
I saw this billboard driving past McAfee Coliseum. It’s a big, very costly billboard, that says blogging on it with the “o” in blogging being the AT&T symbol. I took the picture because I really wondered why AT&T would pay this much money for a billboard that says blogging on it? What was the purpose? What is their hope for results? You can’t tell, but this horizontal billboard is probably 150 feet high or so.
Wear some flowers in your hair
Mar 22nd
I am currently in the city by the Bay. San Francisco.
I am here on business, and I have got to say that the weather here is quite nice (even if I have been in doors the entire time). The best part about it all is that it’s just a day trip to the corporate offices of HandHeld Entertainment. HandHeld Entertainment is a digital media entertainment company. They make portable media players and they acquire content for the players.
I’ll try to take some camera phone pictures of the city and post them up tomorrow.
- Russ
