Brand Mix

My weekly summary of interesting and entertaining posts. More at the bottom of the page in "Martin's Shared Items":

1) A Brand Metric Goes Bye-Bye: Dim Bulb
Jonathan Salem Baskin's very different point of view about same store sales than the one I expressed in the third edition of my Death by tools and metrics series. Jonathan has also added an interesting comment to that post.

2) Obsolete skills: Brad Kellett
A website about skills no longer needed. Things like: Adjusting rabbit ears on top of a TV, focusing a camera, harnessing a team of oxen and reading logarithm tables

3) The Most Interesting Branding Story is in Politics: Advertising Age
Jennifer Patterson talks about the Clinton vs. Obama battle in terms of better product vs. better brand. My take on this year's presidential race here.

4) Learning how to talk changes how we perceive color: Boing Boing
Cory Doctorow points to a new study that shows the influence of speech on perception. When I was growing up in England, we had about 50 different words for rain. Most thankfully not needed here in California.

5) Do coat hangers sound as good as Monster cables? Boing Boing
I did some work a couple of years ago for Belkin so I couldn't help enjoying this post about how Monster cables (a Belkin competitor) don't sound any better than coat hangers. This post also complements the story I just posted about the power of price on perception.