People absorb information passively. Humans can, of course, intently study; but few can fully switch off passive learning. This gives advertising incredible power over people they do not recognize. I vividly remember a multi-month period in my childhood when headlines about Tylenol overdoses dominated the nightly news. I also remember Aleve’s commercial saying, “Just two Aleve can stop the pain all day – it would take eight Tylenol to do that.” I was a child, but I’ve always held the Aleve commercials contributed to the Tylenol overdoses. House Keeping This article was written for broad syndication, along with links to my other recent work. I’m also linking to some interesting things I’ve been reading as I believe doing so makes the internet less platform dependent. Recent Articles BuzzFeed News And Twitter Blues To greatly paraphrase Tolstoy, you can explain anything to a complete ding dong if they know nothing about the topic, but you’ll fail to explain it to the greatest minds if they start with any preconceptions. Cognitive bias is powerful. People will pay more for a worse product if they think the brand is better. Elon Musk was able to do in months what BuzzFeed News couldn’t do in years; completely eradicate prior brand perceptions. Making the blue checks a clear transaction that everyone understands scrubbed away the patina. Doing away with the legacy checkmarks took away the last bits of aureole for the symbol. Capital: Spent, Deployed, Made Up Dear Startup Folks, Most of you live in…Ad Fed Brains, And Other Stories