Rosser Reeves, an American advertising executive, is the subject of one of the most famous stories in advertising. While the precise details are unknown, the legend goes like this: One afternoon, Reeves and a colleague were having lunch in Central Park. On their way back to their Madison Avenue office, they saw a beggar holding […]

It was 1928, and George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company (ATC), had a challenge on his hands. Tobacco companies had long targeted women, but due to the social taboo against women smoking in public, none had succeeded at breaking the market.  In an effort to target women—albeit, from a fresh angle—Washington sought […]

Texas, 1985. Seventeen undergraduates sit in a university laboratory, trying not to think of an Ursus maritimus—otherwise known as a polar bear. Five minutes earlier, a researcher named Daniel Wegner had given the instruction, “For the next fifteen minutes, please try not to think about white bears.” [1] “The mere act of trying not to […]

A four-person team was standing in front of a box of assorted items. The challenge was simple: the team needed to build the tallest free-standing structure, they could, using: Twenty pieces of uncooked spaghetti; One yard of tape; One yard of string; and One marshmallow. The team had eighteen minutes to complete the task, and […]

On May 1, 2015, Dave Goldberg died suddenly while on vacation in Mexico. His wife, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, found her husband lying face down on the hotel gym floor, unresponsive and not breathing. He was 47 years old. Consumed with grief, Sandberg sought support from her close friend, Adam Grant, who shared […]