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Lightheavyweight

You'll find out what I knew all along: you can't always smile when things go wrong


Moving on... Lifestyle Marketing BlogSeptember 25

I've decided to pull the plug on this blog for a variety of reasons (most them being variations on "nobody reads it"). If, for some reason, you want to keep reading what I have to say, I've started a new project:

Lifestyle Marketing Blog

I hope it can become the foremost destination for lifestyle marketing news and ideas on the web. Check it out!
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Sports nutrition presentationSeptember 16
By day, I work on giant mega-brands like Swiffer, Febreze, Bounce, Pampers, and Tide as a consultant, mostly for Procter & Gamble. This has been an incredible learning experience for me, and I feel extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to work with so many people and learn how to develop products for the world's largest consumer goods company.

I'm also a passionate fitness and nutrition enthusiast, and it drives me crazy to see so many sports nutrition brands that I love struggle to reach their potential because their marketing isn't what it should be. I figured I'd take some time to put together my thoughts on the state of the sports nutrition industry and share it.

Ideally, I can use this work to make some connections with marketers in the industry and find some opportunities to work together. I don't want to make this a sales pitch, but if you're in the sports nutrition industry and want to hear more, or you have a project that could be a good fit, just send me a note and we'll talk!





Greg Mankiw, gas tax advocateSeptember 6
It's campaign season, which means lots of empty, populist rhetoric from both sides of the aisle. The BS flows most freely when it comes to the topic of taxes and energy prices. Nearly every candidate promises to fix everything at no cost to taxpayers, but few go into much depth as to how exactly they might work this miracle. This is because the subject is exceedingly complex, and there are few things American voters hate more than facts, especially if they have to read them.

Fortunately, Greg Mankiw, one of my favorite economists, comes to the rescue with this highly readable paper on Pigovian gas taxes. The idea is simple: consumption of oil introduces many costs that are borne by the world at large (pollution, traffic, geopolitical instability, and so forth). Pigovian gas taxes simply add these costs to each gallon of gas- about $2 per gallon- with the intent of reducing usage.

Mankiw does an excellent job of articulating the idea, but what I found equally interesting was his explanation of the gap between what economists believe and what voters think. Elitist? Perhaps, but as Mankiw says, I prefer to think of it as simply rational:

As an economics educator, I have always been fascinated by topics about which there is a large gap between the beliefs of economists and those of the general pu






Dilbert on economicsAugust 23
As you may know, Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, is not only funny but a very smart guy. I don't think there are a lot of people who could describe themselves as cartoonist/skeptical empiricist, but Adams is one of them. I admire and respect people like him who do their best to see things as they really are, not how they wish things were. To that end, his blog today has an excellent post on economists:

[I]f an economist tries to tell you where the stock market will be in a year, you can safely ignore that. But if he tells you a gas tax holiday is an unambiguously bad idea, that's worth listening to, especially if economists on both sides of the aisle agree.

If you think it is okay to ignore economists because they are so often wrong, you're looking at the wrong questions. Economists are generally wrong with complicated models but right about concepts. For example, they know that additional domestic drilling won't make much of a dent in the energy problem. And they know that free trade is generally good for all economies. (You can argue with my examples, but the point is that some things are generally known by economists while not being understood by the general public.)

By analogy, a mechanic knows that changing your oil is good for your engine, but he c




Book review: Predictably IrrationalAugust 19

As someone who attempts to be rational, often to a fault, I'm intrigued by the study of heuristics and biases, or the various psychological blindspots that human beings suffer from. For example, the confirmation bias leads us to seek information that supports our ideas and ignore things that do not ("Could this be true?? Sure, why not."). The intersection of economics and cognitive biases is the field called behavioral economics.

Predictably Irrational is a fantastic introduction to behavioral economics and cognitive biases. They might sound like intimidating subjects, but they really aren't, especially given author Dan Ariely's extremely accessible, friendly, and entertaining writing style. From the book's site:

Do you know why we still have a headache after taking a five-cent aspirin, but why that same headache vanishes when the aspirin costs 50 cents?

Do you know why people who have been asked to recall the Ten Commandments tend to be more honest (at least immediately afterward) than those who haven’t? Or why honor codes actually do reduce dishonesty in the workplace?