What the Hell Are You Talking About

What the Hell Are You Talking About

There's an old saying in marketing that half of all marketing works, but nobody knows which half. That's likely an outdated metric, what with the new army of data scientists and algorithms that didn't used to exist, but there are still plenty of places where art is called for more than science. Take for example movie advertising, my old bailiwick. When deciding what tagline to put on a poster, or which review quotes to include in an ad, it's mostly hunch.…

Get Real: Portland vs California Real Estate

One of my favorite recurring features in the NY Times is their What You Get column, in which they'll pick a budget (say, $850,000) and tell you how much acreage that'll get you in Texas versus what size of refrigerator box it will be in San Francisco. I'm now going to shamelessly rip this feature off (albeit strictly in a Portland and California way), but I'd like to make it more of a competition. Gladiatorial, perhaps. Each house included in the…