Sunday, January 11, 2009

Maybe you can’t quantify those numbers, but they do add up

--- Rob Reilly, co-executive creative director of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency behind the A Burger King promotion to give people hamburger vouchers in exchange for dumping Facebook friends, reported in "The Value of a Facebook Friend? About 37 Cents", Jenna Wortham for the New York Times BITS section, January 9, 2009

Context from the story:
To earn their free burger, users download the Whopper Sacrifice Facebook application and dump 10 unlucky friends deemed to be unworthy of their weight in beef. After completing the purge, users are prompted to enter their addresses and the coupons are sent out via snail mail.

. . . .

“Choosing 10 people can take a lot of time,” said Mr. Reilly. “There’s at least an hour’s worth of people’s eyes on your brand. Maybe you can’t quantify those numbers, but they do add up.”

Besides, he added, “we aren’t giving the burgers away -– you have to sacrifice. You are paying for it but the currency is different.”

What price is Burger King placing on a Facebook friendship? At a suggested retail price of $3.69 for the Angry Whopper sandwich, customers are trading each deleted friend for about 37 cents’ worth of bun and beef.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Aristotle will always have thought of it before you. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

--- Umberto Eco, interviewed in The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 197, Issue 185, Summer 2008, p. 91 (this excerpt not on the web page)

Quote in context:

An idea you have might not be original - Aristotle will always have thought of it before you. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original. Men love women. It's not an original idea. But if you somehow write a terrific novel about it, then by a literary sleight of hand it becomes absolutely original. I simply believe that at the end of the day a story is always richer - it is an idea reshaped into an event, informed by a character, and sparked by crafted language. So naturally, when an idea is transformed into a living organism, it turns into something completely different and, likely, far more expressive.