Tom Ruwitch
This is the story of how a bottle of foot powder was elected Mayor of a town in Ecuador. I’m not kidding. During the 1967 mayoral election in PicoazĂ (population 4,000), a foot powder company launched an ad campaign with this slogan: “Vote for any candidate, but if you want well-being and hygiene, vote for…
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I recently spent a couple of weeks in New Zealand. Beautiful country. One of the most memorable things I saw there: Signs illustrating the right way to pooh. This is not B.S. These signs were as common as fart jokes in a boys locker room. On the right… a drawing of a person sitting on…
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I hope you had a joyous Groundhog Day! (It was last Tuesday, in case you missed it). Truth be told, I can live without the holiday. But I love the movie. Weatherman Phil Connor (Bill Murray) wakes each morning in Punxsutawney, PA for a Groundhog Day do-over. On each of these days, Phil runs into an…
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In Monday’s email, I recommended the new biography Leonardo DaVinci (by Walter Isaacson). Great read. Lots of interesting stories. Many business lessons. Here’s one: In 1480, monks hired Leo to create a painting of the Adoration of the Magi. Leo started the project, but he stopped before finishing. Leo imagined the perfect painting, but he couldn’t achieve that perfection.…
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Back in high school I had a basketball coach who didn’t win any spelling bees or grammar contests. Once, after we failed to run the play he called during practice, he stormed onto the court, screaming: “Jeez, yous guys! Don’t you know the American language!?” Smart-ass kids that we were, we used to mock Coach…
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I’m not a surgeon. And I don’t play one on TV. But I know this much: If you’re operating on ONE patient, and THREE people die, you’ve botched the job. That really happened — to Dr. Robert Liston, who was famous in the 19th century for being the fastest surgeon around. In those days, before…
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Here’s what McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson said when describing bubblegum-flavored broccoli that the company developed a few years ago: “It wasn’t all that.” Huh!? Put yourself in the shoes of those poor kids who tasted this Frankenstein “food.” Imagine what you might have said if you sampled the stuff. It’s gotta be more (lots more) than, “It wasn’t…
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