That's Interesting!

  The uproar about the Barbie movie being snubbed at the Oscars is based on a misunderstanding between what is entertaining and what is interesting. The box office receipts speak for themselves. The movie is a huge hit, and audiences went to see it in droves. Barbie succeeded in its ability to entertain, but according to the Motion Picture Academy, it didn't deliver on interestingness. It wasn't a remarkable artistic achievement. Pamela Paul's opinion piece in the NY Times attempts to disentangle the entertaining from the interesting. "Can I say that, despite winsome leads and likable elements, it didn’t cohere or accomplish anything interesting, without being written off as a) mean, b) old, c) hateful, or d) humorless?" Her point is, yes it is entertaining, but not interesting (at least not to her). Martin Scorsese says essentially the same thing when he distinguished between entertainment and cinema in his 2019 editorial “ I said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. L...

We expect to buy and sell everything in an instant now. Why would selling a home be any different? This live stunt will no doubt generate attention during Super Bowl Sunday. Its interestingness, as always, is in the eye of the beholder. Depending on what pattern you bring to it, what you are left with is either very positive or very negative. For many, what's worth thinking about will be a quick and frictionless way to sell your home. Others who have been following the story about the housing crisis in America and Wall St. becoming a leading buyer of homes in the single-family market will be disturbed by the negative consequences of this. According to a report from Stateline ( https://lnkd.in/gMqfEq8u ), nearly 22 percent of single-family home purchases were made by corporate entities within the past year. CNBC claims ( https://lnkd.in/gvefrd3A ) that by 2030, institutional investors will own nearly 40 percent of the nation’s single-family rentals. A quick way to sell to an all-c...

Are they serious by claiming to be targeting aliens or are they just flirting with the absurd? It doesn't matter. MoonPie's Alien Acquisition campaign exemplifies the efficiency of being interesting. Alien Acquisition succeeds at generating publicity and mental availability for the brand by getting more people to notice, think about, and even talk about the brand. Interestingness is a process of extended discovery. And for a brand when the process feels complete, interestingness fades. Interest in MoonPie had been fading for a long time. There was nothing left to discover about the snack food, except for the small group on Twitter who found their voice funny. They took a big swing with Alien Acquisition, their first mass media campaign in ages. To generate interest they chose not to deliver a clear and comprehensible message about product benefits, but instead through the unexplained. Which seems to have generated surprise, confusion, and curiosity, all of which are forms of i...

The fact that the ad world is so wound up about this ad shows how low the bar is in the current state of advertising. There is nothing new, original, insightful or interesting about this ad. Unless you think an original insight is "humans like sex." Sex sells is a fundamental truth of advertising. This is no secret. An attractive actor in his underwear will sell underwear. There is nothing else to glean from this. It is pure spectacle. No one will be talking about it a year from now. No one will study it as a profound advancement in the history of advertising. Calvin Klein has always been about the spectacle of celebrity sex. The interest comes from the celebrity. At least they’re consistent.

The hiring of Deion Sanders delivered the "Prime Effect" by boosting every important brand and business metric for the school: visibility, prestige, interest, penetration, revenue, and profit. A gamble that paid off. In response to a press question about where CU got the money to hire Deion Sanders as the new football head coach on Dec. 4, 2022, Rick George said: “We don’t have the money yet, but I know we’ll have it.” Return on Investment? Based on the data so far, his worth to the university in 2023 is estimated at $280 million. Some say it will be well over $1 billion by the end of his five-year $29.5 million contract. The 2023 numbers: Ticket sales up 152%. Just under $20 million in additional revenue. TV Viewership up: Colorado had the most-watched game of the season through the first 11 weeks with 10.03 million viewers and 5 of the 13 most-watched college games this season. For comparison Alabama, a perennial top draw, had three of the top 13. Merch sales up: Online...