Fire and Knowledge

Tim Ferris has a great article on the art of negotiating. This is something I’ve never been good at — it’s an uncomfortable skill to learn, but it can definitely be worth it!

Here are his five basic principles, in order of use:

1. Negotiate just prior to the other side’s deadlines.
2. Make them negotiate against themselves.
3. Use a “flinch” whenever someone mentions their first discounted offer.
4. Increase value while lowering price.
5. Never be the ultimate decision maker.
6. Use intelligent “bracketing.”
7. Practice using the “firm offer.”

If you haven’t heard, the weekly Presidential radio address will now be video recorded and put on youtube each week. Such a small thing, but smart. I mean, who listens to the President on the radio? I would have no idea when or where it was on. But youtube — that makes sense.

This is a great way for the President to bypass the media (and their inevitable lame commentary) and communicate directly to the people each week. My guess is this will only increase Obama’s image.

Here’s the first one:

Here is Holiday Inn’s cancellation policy:

Canceling your reservation … will result in a charge for the entire stay per room to your credit card.

Policies like this don’t make people love your company. It makes it look greedy, impersonal, and unfair.

T-Mobile claims they own the copyright for the color magenta. How quaintly absurd.

Seth Godin on why restaurants can’t have a bad table. Excerpt:

No one wants to settle for the bad table, your worst salesperson, your second-rate items. Not the new customers and not the loyal ones…

Which means you need to figure out how to improve your lesser offerings. Maybe the table in the worst location comes with a special menu or a special wine list or even a visit from the chef. Maybe the worst table, for some people, becomes the best table because of the way you treat people when they sit there…

Treat different people differently. But don’t treat anyone worse.

What happens when you turn a square 45 degrees? A new product! Introducing Diamond Shreddies.

When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. “Hey, ladies,” it said to us, “go ahead, get liberated. We’ll take care of dinner.” They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply.

—Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins: 2007), p. 126.

Has advertising gotten better since 9/11? Paula Scher thinks so. An excerpt:

On the whole (with the exception of movie and theater advertising) ads are better designed than anytime I can remember since the sixties. The concepts are smarter, the layouts are more sophisticated, type choices are more appropriate, and art direction is more nuanced.