Welcome to Indenture

Employers who recruit a lot of recent grads are luring them with a new perk: student loan repayment.

Bloomberg reports that investment and consulting firms like Nataxis and   PricewaterhouseCoopers will pony up as much as $250 a month toward a candidate's college debt.

McKinsey, Bain Capital and Accenture will also pay down employees' student debt, according to The Wall Street Journal.

If you're willing to provide seed money, we can jump on the bandwagon and start up our own firm to compete with Accenture.

Indenture.

A pillar of colonial America, indenture (a version of "enforced servitude") underwrote the tobacco economy in the Chesapeake region.

Under the system, an Englishman who sought a clean start in America signed a contract that promised he'd repay his master for ship fare, clothing, and room and board by laboring for seven years. 

Women also signed the contracts.

The word indenture refers to an indentation made on each contract. When it was drawn, two copies were made. One copy was then placed over the other and an edge indented.

As a result, master and servant could always spot whether a copy might be forged (often the end-date would be changed by one or the other party.)

On a serious note: Burdensome debt is no laughing matter. It drives in part the popularity of Bernie Sanders among Millennials. As one Boomer told a group of college students, “Your generation’s debt is our generation’s draft."

View-Master Revisited

This week, I was treated to a rough-cut of a DMO's forthcoming virtual reality promotion.

The glories of the city's convention center and hotels were revealed in full and fabulous 3D.

Writing for Associations Now, Samatha Whitehorn claims VR is destined to become "a mainstream feature of association meetings and destination marketing."

Little wonder, Whitehorn says. "The power of VR is that it gives the viewer a unique sense of empathic connection to people and events."

DMOs will tap VR to give their cities an edge in event planners' eyes, and even offer it as an alternative to live streaming, so folks unable to attend an event can join in from afar.

But wait a cotton-pickin' minute!

"VR's going to kill my event," every planner's shouting.

Not in my book.

I may be a curmudgeon, but VR is only higher octane View-Master.

Don't get me wrong: I loved View-Master as a kid. But it didn't keep me from exploring the world beyond my bedroom.

I predict VR will indeed find its niche—alongside the Pet Rock and the Cabbage Patch Kid.

What do you think?

You Don't Have to be Jewish

Once upon a time, I had the privilege of interviewing madman George Lois for a magazine article about ad creative.

When I asked, "What makes an ad effective?" Lois said, "An ad has to kick you in the ass with an idea you like."

In other words, the advertiser needs to startle you, then evoke a little love.

Last year's most-shared ads, according to Unruly, did just this.

Each ad transmitted a powerful idea by marshaling a string of surprising sounds and images that, taken together, can't help but excite love… at least a little.

As Don Draper said in Mad Men, “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.”

And now for last year's most-shared ad…



Read more about emotion's role in advertising here.

Over. Not Over.

Why buy sunglasses at Walmart when there's Warby Parker?

Metrosexuals' buying habits mean retail giants are “overstored,” says The Washington Post.

Retail space, which mushroomed before the Great Recession, is growing at a pace slower than that of the US population, while retailers like Macy's and Jos. A. Bank shutter stores left and right.

But closing stores isn't the same as closing shop:

• Walmart, for example, will close 269 stores this year; but it will also open 300 new stores; and spend billions on a new e-commerce operation. 

• Williams-Sonoma and other specialty chains will aim for a "sweet spot" of around 250 stores, while drawing more sales from e-com. 

• Chains like Burlington Coat Factory will chop not the number, but the size, of their stores, packing "the entire assortment in a smaller box." 

• Staples will repurpose its real estate by adding shared office spaces to stores. 

• Sears will sublet space to Nordstrom Rack and Dick’s Sporting Goods. 

As retail giants abandon shopping centers, nontraditional tenants like restaurants, gyms and health clinics will fill the space, according to analysts. 

European retailers will also begin to appear on the scene in large numbers.

HAT TIP: Michael Hatch led me to the Post article.

Big Data Meets Big Idea

J. Walter Thompson wondered whether big data could be assembled to paint "The Next Rembrandt" for client ING.

So a team of art historians, scientists, developers and analysts created scans of Rembrandt's 346 extant paintings and used a computer to catalog the data based on commonalities.

They then asked the computer to paint a Rembrandt.

The resulting portrait combines 160,000 fragments of the artist's oeuvre.

HAT TIP: Appraiser Todd Sigety alerted me to this story.