Centives

A couple months ago hackers released thousands of emails from Sony pictures. Ben Fritz went through them and pieced together the details behind Sony’s largely unsuccessful awards campaign last year:

• You can hire “awards consultants” who help come up with a strategy to increase the chances of winning an Academy Award.
• With the guidance of an awards consultant, Sony executives considered spending $4.2 million on a “Phase One” campaign for Tom Hanks’ Captain Phillips.
• A Phase One campaign is the amount that’s required merely to make a movie an awards contender. The amount budgeted included $250,000 for DVDs of the movie for the Screen Actors Guild, $250,000 for the cast to travel and promote the film, and $700,000 for ads.
• Spending this kind of money was considered because it was estimated that Tom Hanks winning best actor alone would boost sales by $1 million.
• It’s unclear how much Sony ultimately ended up spending on the campaign but it was unsuccessful. While the movie was nominated for six Oscars, it won none.
• Sony also created an Awards budget for American Hustle, estimating that a best picture win would increase sales by $3 million.
• This campaign was also unsuccessful, possibly because the company was unable to get top stars Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence to schmooze with the entertainment elite at social events, or with hosts of talk shows.

Find out more about what goes into winning an award, why some within Sony think this is “foolish money”, and read how Captain Phillips’ producer reacted to not winning an award over here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Jason Del Rey wrote about how Amazon prices its products:

• Contrary to popular perception, Amazon does not have the lowest prices across all products in a category.
• Instead it finds the most popular product in each category – say a particular brand of television – then makes its prices lower than competitors for that one product.
• Since consumers will likely price compare on the most popular product, they’ll see that Amazon has the lowest prices and (incorrectly) assume that this is true for all products.
• Less popular products in a category seem to be more expensive on Amazon than other websites.
• Amazon’s peripherals are more expensive than competitor versions. The company may be assuming that customers will be comparing prices of the main product, not its accessories.

Read more about how Amazon’s pricing works, and how you can ensure you get the lowest prices here.

Source: re/code

Paul Sullivan wrote about the investments that parents are making in the hopes of not having to pay for college:

• The amount of money that parents are paying to provide sports coaching to their kids has grown to 10.5% of gross income.
• Some see this as an investment – if a child gets a sports scholarship then the parents won’t have to pay for college.
• Parents will thus pay coaches up to $400 an hour to make their children better sportspeople.
• They’ll also take them to camps across the country.
• The chances of a child getting a sports scholarship is so small though that the expected return on investment doesn’t justify the amounts spent.

Read what parents should really be spending money on, the problem of emotionally immature tutors, and more over here.

Source: The New York Times

Beth Montemurro took a look at how Christian weddings have changed over time:

• Queen Victoria of England got the modern wedding dress started when she wore a white satin gown for her wedding in 1840.
• The elite soon copied this fashion although it didn’t become widely popular among the masses until after WW2.
• Up until the mid-1950s Christian weddings were done at home, in the family’s “Sunday best” perhaps with a small dinner party.
• Then modern marketing got started. Stores, jewelers, and caterers began selling the image of a decadent wedding.
• Dolls in bridal gowns imprinted the standards of a modern weddings on children at young ages.

Read about how weddings have evolved, how they are a pledge of allegiance both to the conventional and to the new, and more over here.

You can read more of Centives’ previous coverage on the economics of weddings here.

Source: Aeon

The Economist took a look at adverts that aim to shock and awe:

• Gory adverts, such as those focused on the number of children who die as a result of speeding, leave a longer lasting impression on viewers than non-gory ones.
• However they are less effective at changing behaviour, possibly because extremist ads showcase threats that seem farfetched.
• Positive ads that encourage people to quit smoking, are, for example, more effective than negative ads that try to scare smokers with images of tumors.
• Cash strapped governments and NGOs may increase the use of shock ads, however, since they are more likely to be shared on social media and thus reach a wider audience.

Read more here.

Source: The Economist

As the world was preparing to ring in 2014, a gang of intrepid revolutionaries set out to overthrow Gambia’s dictator. They failed. Javier Blas wrote about how much it cost:

• The group trying to launch the coup d’état consisted of just 20 people.
• The budget for the operations was a measly $220,798.
• This included $2,000 for each of two sniper rifles, and a $4,000 expense account for each of the revolutionaries.
• The operation was bankrolled by an American of Gambian descent who made his fortune in Texas. In return for his investment he was expected to be installed as President.
• This isn’t the first time a few brave souls have tried to take a state. In 2004 the son of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was given a suspended sentence for trying to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea.
• A French soldier launched four coup attempts in the Comoros Island between 1975 and 1995. A couple were even successful.

Read about the attempt, details of the master plan, the group’s motives, and more over here.

Source: Financial Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

In 2009 a hacker leaked a database of passwords. Researchers have been studying it since, and in a fascinating article about society’s relationship with passwords Ian Urbina wrote about the kinds of keys we choose:

• Around 10% of passwords are a name followed by a year.
• The word ‘password’ makes up 0.2% of all passwords.
• The most common verb is “love” – it is 12 times as common as conjugations of the word “hate”.
• The most popular adjectives are “sexy”, “hot”, and “pink”.
• In passwords that begin with “I love” a man’s name is four times more likely to appear at the end than a woman’s.
• The word “team” is surprisingly popular in passwords – but because versions of the Spanish “te amo” (I love you) are often used in passwords.
• 14344 is also a popular password – the numbers represent the number of letters in each of the words of the phrase “I love you very much”.

The full article provides an in depth look about what passwords mean to us, the meaning that we imbue them with, and much more. It is well written and you should read it here.

Source: The New York Times

Max Fisher wrote about how best to overthrow a government:

• Research indicates that about 50% of peaceful uprisings succeed in their objectives while violent ones are only half as successful.
  
• The success of peaceful protests is a recent phenomenon. Up until about the 1950s it was violent ones that were more successful.
  
• The data suggests that once 3.5% of a country’s population becomes involved in an uprising, the rate of success shoots up to 100%.
  
• No violent campaign has managed to achieve participation by 3.5% of the country thus the strategy’s relative lack of success.
  
• Part of the reason why violence is unsuccessful is because violent protests legitimize the use of force by the regime, allowing them to crush the revolution.
  
• They can also unite what may have previously been a divided regime on the brink of collapse.
  
• And violent protesters may lose the sympathy of the wider populace thus failing to spark a broader revolution.
  
• Peaceful revolutions have other benefits. They are 15% less likely to relapse into civil war than violent ones.
  

Read more about the benefits of non-violence, and see some fascinating charts over here.

Source: The Washington Post

Play-Doh was originally meant for a very different purpose, according to Daven Hiskey:

• In 1933 people used coal to heat their homes which generated a lot of soot that clung to the walls.
• Play-Doh was invented to remove the soot. It could be rolled against the walls to pick up the grime.
• Coal started to be replaced by oil and gas, and vinyl wallpapers that could be cleaned with water and soap became more popular causing sales of Play-Doh to crash.
• After removing the cleaning agents and adding some scents the material was repurposed into a toy.
• Moreover, while as wallpaper cleaner it sold for $0.34 a can, as a toy they could sell the same amount for $1.50.
• The makers soon had close to ten years’ worth of orders to fill.

Read more about Play-Doh’s history, how the person who came up with the name, and the idea to use it as a children’s toy, was given no credit, and how Captain Kangaroo helped make it a hit over here.

Source: Today I Found Out

Via: Huffington Post