Don't Let the Weeds Win Out

"It’s easy to get lost in the weeds when planning a trade show," says Holly Barker in Event MB. 

Their focus on killing and controlling costs blinds most planners to the hidden profit streams their shows represent.

Barker suggests these simple ways to grow more green:

• Pub crawl. Offer a limited number of exhibitors the chance to sponsor a pub crawl through the trade show floor. Make the event a blast by including themed games, besides beer and wine.

• Parties. Offer exhibitors exclusive rights to make a big splash at your evening parties.

• Logo rights. Offer one exhibitor exclusive rights to project its logo onto your venue's walls at night.

• Online campaigns. Offer exhibitors the chance to co-brand content on your website. Also encourage sponsored content.

• Matchmaking. Offer exhibitors an online matchmaking service that lets attendees sign up for meetings with them at your show. Link the service with sponsored content. And don't bury it in your website. Make sure people who can't attend can also view the content and get in touch with exhibitors.

Up to Our Eyeballs in Enthymemes

Enthymemes. We're up to our eyeballs in them.

An enthymeme, first described by Aristotle in Rhetoric is an incomplete logical construct. It's based on an unspoken premise shared between a speaker and her audience.

Here's a familiar enthymeme:

"Make America Great Again."

The unspoken shared premise:

"America used to be great."

An enthymeme's power comes not from what's spoken, but what's unspoken, Aristotle says. When a premise is left unspoken, the audience supplies it, completing the circle. So, instead of the speaker persuading us, we persuade ourselves.

For Aristotle, self-persuasion is especially effective because we take pleasure in participating in the exchange. We're tickled with our ability to connect the dots—to "get it" without handholding.

But self-persuasion is also self-absorption, Aristotle warns.

An enthymeme helps us see a resemblance—a likeness—and we like most what is like ourselves. "All are more or less lovers of themselves," Aristotle says.

The effective speaker exploits this self-love.

She knows that—when the audience completes the circle—it chooses to hear what it wants to hear.

They May Never Know What Hit Them

Whether they know it or not, Millennials' destinies have been shaped by the Great Recession—just as Boomers' were shaped by the Vietnam War.

While family and fortune play defining roles, wars and the economy affect our lives more fundamentally.

In 1960, John O'Hara sent his publisher Bennett Cerf a letter describing the cast of characters in a book he was writing.

O'Hara described them as "the people of my time," men and women too young to be part of The Lost Generation—the generation disillusioned by World War I—but too old to feel part of "The Greatest Generation."

"Everybody can understand a war," O'Hara told Cerf. "But it is not so easy to understand an economic revolution; even the experts continue to be baffled by it; and the people of my time never know what hit them or why."

Millennials are in a companion boat.

They're a generation that won't see anything resembling the luxury and security their parents and grandparents enjoyed.

And they may never know what hit them.

As marketer Mitch Joel advises in his new book, Ctrl Alt Delete, "Accept it: There is no gold watch in your future."

Kathy, I'm Lost, I Said

Anheuser-Busch InBev has asked federal regulators for approval to replace the name "Budweiser" on cans and bottles this summer with the name "America," AdAge reports.

"You have this wave of patriotism that is going to go up and down throughout the summertime," Marketing VP Jorn Socquet said. "And we found with Budweiser such a beautiful angle to play on that sentiment."

If approved, the brand's labels would also include song lyrics like "from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters this land was made for you and me."

Listening Hard

Forgotten genius Ring Lardner was a popular satirist of the 1920s, famous for the practice of "listening hard."

He delighted fans by cloning the speech of ball players, barbers, cops and musicians in his newspaper columns, short stories, songs and plays.

Lardner influenced other, better known writers who followed, including Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway and John O'Hara.

"Listening hard" is the secret sauce not only of good writers, but good salespeople, customer service reps, therapists, judges, spouses and parents.

Sadly, most of the time we default to "easy listening," where others' speech functions merely as elevator music during our ride to the top.

We're eager only to listen with the intent to reply, rather than understand, as Stephen Covey noted.

“When people talk, listen completely," Hemingway said. "Most people never listen.”