Marketing and branding are everywhere. You can’t escape the pull of corporate logos, advertisements, and thinly-veiled messages present in everything you do. The average American, according to Consumer Reports, is exposed to 247 advertisements per day, and marketeers are forever on the lookout for the next big way to send their corporate sales pitch out to a large - but targeted - audience.

This, perhaps surprisingly, takes us to the airport. The commercial airline industry carries an estimated 2 billion passengers a year, who spend anywhere from $1 (with low-cost carriers like RyanAir and easyJet) to over $100,000 (for a spot on the maiden flight of Singapore Airlines’ new Airbus A380).

In the departure lounge, waiting for a flight, this is a rich - and captive - audience. So what can airlines do to market to all of these people who will fly and will spend money? Read the rest of this entry »

Sure, everybody wants to know “How long is recovery?” and “Will it hurt?”, but if you’re going to surrender your body and countless thousands of dollars to a complete stranger, perhaps a little bit more caution is in order.

For every plastic surgery horror story in the media, there are countless surgeons doing beautiful work on patients around the globe. The problem is, telling these surgeons apart is often very difficult, especially in the run-of-the-mill 30 minute chats typical of any surgical consultation.

We’re not saying you should treat every doctor like the enemy - they’re not, and trust is key to any doctor/patient relationship - but asking these five hard-hitting questions of your plastic surgeon will help you to think outside of the box and gain new perspectives on buying your dream body.

These are five questions you never thought you’d ask - but you need to! Read the rest of this entry »

The Boston Celtics and Green Bay Packers are proving this year that you can win with green. So why are the new Tampa Bay Rays logos and uniforms stepping back towards generic?

The Tampa Bay Rays (nee “Devil Rays”) unveiled a new logo this week. In addition to now formally being known as the Rays (as in “ray of sunshine” instead of “manta ray fish”), the Rays have adopted a dramatically different color scheme. When the team entered the league in 1998, they sported white jerseys with a gradient of blue-green-yellow in the lettering; later, these uniforms changed to a more subdued dark green, which was a step in a nice direction.

Now, the Rays have dumped that color scheme too, in favor of new Tampa Bay Rays uniforms - blue with light blue accents and a “touch of gold”. Read the rest of this entry »