2 stories

2 great stories i like to share, from the words of Rory Sutherland

Frederick the Great of Prussia was very keen for the Germans to adopt the potato and to eat it, because if you had 2 sources of carbohydrates, wheat and potatoes, you get less price volatility in bread and you get a far lower risk of famine because you had 2 crops to fall back on. The only problem was it looked pretty disgusting and also 18th century Prussians ate very very little vegetables. He tried making it compulsory, but the Prussian peasantry said they couldn't get the dogs to eat this damn things, they're absolutely disgusting, good for nothing. They're even records of people being executed for refusing to grow potatoes. So he tried Plan B, the marketing approach. He declared the potato as the royal vegetable and none but the royal family could consume it and he planted it in a royal potato patch, with guards who had instructions to guard over it, night and day, but with the secret instructions of not to guard it very well. 18th century peasants know there's one pretty safe rule in life, if something's worth guarding, it's worth stealing. Before long, there was massive underground potato growing operation in Germany. What he effectively done was he rebranded the potato.

Another story of the veil. Atatürk of Turkey, mush like Nikolas Sarkozy, was very keen to discourage the wearing of the veil in Turkey to modernize it. Now, boring people would have simply banned the veil, but that would have ended with a lot of awful kickback and a hell of a lot of resistance. Now Ataturk was a lateral thinker. He made it compulsory for prostitutes to wear the veil.

It's not very fully, but you could see 2 things. How creative both these men were, and how effective that rebranding was to acheive what they wanted.

another example comes from signs and lights that showed you how fast you were going, with smiley faces and frowny faces that indicated whether of not you went over the speed limit. it baffels modern economists because these signs cost only 10% of a conventional speed camera to operate and work better than a fine and demerit points to your license.

it's hard to change reality, it's easy to change perception