Can Your Brand Pass the Cool-Test?

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart defined his pornography-test by saying, "I know it when I see it."

Consumers also rely on Stewart's standard when judging whether a brand is cool, according to Professors Margaret Campbell and Caleb Warren.

Their article in the Journal of Consumer Research, "What Makes Things Cool," pinpoints five cool-tests for a brand:

• Cool is whatever consumers think is cool
• Cool is distinct from simply likable
• Cool expresses self-styled independence
• Cool grants social standing
• Cool varies by consumers' ages

Because cool is subjective, it's hard for brand marketers to anticipate consumer response to their products and promotions. 

But, based on their studies, the professors believe there are three ways for a brand to pass the cool-tests. A cool brand must:

• Portray itself as rebellious, but in a nice way (endorsing personal, but never political, revolution)
• Associate with cool spokespeople
• Introduce innovative products and product packaging

Can your brand pass the cool-test?

A $49 Cure for Tone Deafness

Tone deaf? 

Well, good news: there's an app for that.

For only $49 a month, Crystal will provide you the empathy you sorely lack.

A Gmail add-on, Crystal scrapes your colleagues' social media posts; analyzes the posts; and attaches to each individual one of 64 different personality types.

Then, whenever you craft an email, the app prompts you to revise your words and ideas, so they sync with the reader's personality type.

Autocorrect, meet Myers-Briggs.

Crystal also suggests when to tighten your message; toss in an emoji; or use a little humor to soften things.

The end result? All your emails turn out more pleasant and pithy.

Crystal's developers claim their algorithm assigns personality types with 80% accuracy.

You can boost that accuracy, too, by answering multiple-choice questions about a colleague (such as, "If there were a conflict at work, how would he or she react?").

Express Editors Eliminate Leads

Mirroring bloggers, the editors of Express, the anorexic sister of The Washington Post, have eliminated lead paragraphs in news stories, as the following article shows:

Palmyra scholar beheaded by ISIS

Khaled al-Assas, 81, spent his life protecting the Roman-era ruins

DAMASCUS, SYRIA. The aging antiquities scholar dedicated his life to exploring and overseeing Syria's ancient ruins of Palmyra, one of the Middle East's most spectacular archeological sites.

Islamic State militants who now control the city beheaded him in a main square Tuesday after accusing him of being the "director of idols," then hung his body on a pole, witnesses and relatives said Wednesday.

Journalists used to sweat strong leads.

Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee, in The Wall Street Journal, called the strong lead "a flashlight that shines down into the story" and, because it bears an illuminative role, "the hardest part of a story to write."

Alas, no longer.

In the race to the finish line, there are no more leads.

Please Kill the Zombies

Clichés are writing's walking dead.

You can pretend they're harmless, but soon they'll take over—and come back to bite you.

A scrupulous writer kills clichés when they begin to pop up in her work.

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions," says George Orwell in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language:

• What am I trying to say?
• What words will express it?
• What image will make it clear?
• Is the image fresh?

A scrupulous writer will ask, in addition:

• Could I say it in fewer words?
• Have I said anything avoidably ugly?

"But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble," Orwell says. 

"You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you—even think your thoughts for you, to certain extent—and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself."

Before you click publish, do readers—and yourself—a favor.

Please kill the zombies.

All Web Journalists are Liars

Jon Stewart convinced us—as if we needed convincing—that all TV journalists are liars.

Ryan Holiday, minus the laughs, is the Jon Stewart of the web.

After reading the first 40 pages of Trust Me, I'm Lying, you will never read news from Business Insider, The Daily Beast, Drudge Report, BuzzFeed, Politico or Huffington Post with your old credulity again.

A recovering PR practitioner, Holiday explains how starving web journalists work; and how greedy publishers and wanton publicists exploit their hunger every hour of every day.

"Bloggers eager to build names and publishers eager to sell their blogs are like two crooked businessmen colluding to create interest in a bogus investment opportunity—building up buzz and clearing town before anyone gets wise," Holiday writes. "In this world, where the rules and ethics are lax, a third player can exert massive influence. Enter: the media manipulator."

With the same aplomb that Silent Spring laid bare corporate greed and The Pentagon Papers government secrecy, Trust Me, I'm Lying exposes the utter corruption that plagues web journalism—and the noxious effect it has on all of us.