Innovations Like Instagram Are Tough for Large Companies [NYT] – Large companies try so many different ways to create subsets of their culture that is somehow more free. Ray Ozzie did it at Microsoft, through architecture and interior design. I do wonder how many leaders treat this like a cultural problem, though, and bring the appropriate solutions to bear.

Leica, Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Olympus didn’t build Instagram, either. Michael Hawley, who is on Kodak’s board, said the answer could be summed up in one word: culture. “It’s a little like asking why Hasbro didn’t do Farmville, or why McDonald’s didn’t start Whole Foods,” said Mr. Hawley. “Cultural patterns are pretty hard to escape once you get sucked into them. For instance, Apple and Google are diametrical opposites in so many ways, have all the skills, but neither of them did Instagram, either.” Neither could Facebook. If it could, it wouldn’t have paid $1 billion to acquire the small team of engineers and access to the program’s 30 million users. The challenge of creating something small and disruptive inside a large company is one that many face today.

Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies – A nice library of dark patterns for persuasion, manipulation, and bluster. Available in a printable poster, too.

A logical fallacy is usually what has happened when someone is wrong about something. It’s a flaw in reasoning. They’re like tricks or illusions of thought, and they’re often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don’t be fooled! This website and poster have been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head. If you see someone committing a logical fallacy, link them to the relevant fallacy to school them in thinky awesomeness.

The Outsourced Life [NYT] – Arlie Hochschild with an insightful and slightly alarming perspective on the consequences of a service society. How does the increasing possibility for outsourcing (also: buying our way into something) change what we bring, expect, or get out of our lives?

The very ease with which we reach for market services may help prevent us from noticing the remarkable degree to which the market has come to dominate our very ideas about what can or should be for sale or rent, and who should be included in the dramatic cast – buyers, branders, sellers – that we imagine as part of our personal life. It may even prevent us from noticing how we devalue what we don’t or can’t buy. A prison cell upgrade can be purchased for $82 a day in Santa Ana, Calif., and for $8 solo drivers in Minneapolis can buy access to car pool lanes on public roadways. Earlier this year, officials at Santa Monica College attempted to allow students to buy spots in oversubscribed classes for $462 per course. Even more than what we wish for, the market alters how we wish. Wallet in hand, we focus in the market on the thing we buy. In the realm of services, this is an experience – the perfect wedding, the delicious “traditional” meal, the well-raised child, even the well-gestated baby.

As we outsource more of our private lives, we find it increasingly possible to outsource emotional attachment. A busy executive, for example, focuses on efficiency; his assistant tells me, “My boss outsources patience to me.” The wealthy employer of a household manager detaches herself from the act of writing personal Christmas-present labels. A love coach encourages clients to think of dating as “work,” and to be mindful of their R.O.I. – return on investment, of emotional energy, time and money. The grieving family member hires a Tombstone Butler to beautify a loved one’s burial site.

Snack makers’ “Red Caviar” Lay’s and “Mango-orange” Oreos appeal more to global tastes [Winnipeg Free Press] – Some possible acquisitions for my Museum of Foreign Groceries.

After noticing sales of Oreos were lagging in China during the summer, Kraft added a green tea ice cream flavour. The cookie combined a popular local flavour with the cooling imagery of ice cream. The green tea version sold well, and a year later, Kraft rolled out Oreos in flavours that are popular in Asians desserts – raspberry-and-blueberry and mango-and-orange…To get a better sense of what Russians like, PepsiCo employees travelled around the country to visit people in their homes and talk about what they eat day-to-day. That was a big task. Russia has nine time zones and spans 7,000 miles, with eating habits that vary by region. The findings were invaluable for executives. In the eastern part of the country, Pepsi found that fish is a big part of the diet. So it introduced “Crab” chips in 2006. It’s now the third most popular flavour in the country. A “Red Caviar” flavour does best in Moscow, where caviar is particularly popular. “Pickled Cucumber,” which piggybacks off of a traditional appetizer throughout Russia, was introduced last year and is already the fourth most popular flavour.

Watch Your Mouth: The Sounds of Snacking [good.is] – Peter Smith examines the way marketing and product development have used sound to manipulate consumer response by building in auditory cues (both in the crinkly packaging and words used in naming and branding) and speculates whether these powers can be used for good rather than evil. For creating healthier eating patterns rather than pushing fatty snacks. Not that I personally have anything against fatty snacks. I wonder if this tactic would be sufficient to move the needle on carrot consumption?

Dan Jurafsky, a Stanford linguist who blogs on The Language of Food, recently performed a “breakfast experiment” on 81 ice cream flavors and 592 cracker brands. He found that the ice cream names tended to employ back vowels-sounds formed in the back of our mouths that generally refer to big, fat, heavy things. Front vowels, on the other hand, tend to be used in words that refer to small, thin, light foods, like crackers. Say them out loud: rocky road, chocolate, cookie dough, coconut-heavy on low-frequency o’s. Now listen to Cheese Nips, Cheez-Its, Wheat Thins, Ritz Bits, Triscuit, Cheese Crisps-you can hear all those little bitty e’s and i’s. These things matter. Sound symbolism appears to be more universal than the kinds of learned cultural associations we pair with colors or odors…In other words, making potato chips appealing goes well beyond the right combination of salt and oil. From the atmospheric crinkling of the bag to the crunch inside your mouth, all these sounds influence our perception of food at the affective level. Even saying the word “chip” forces a smile. It’s easy to see these tools could be used to manipulate and market food deceptively, say, “Snap into an (itty-bitty sounding) Slim Jim!” But it’s also worth thinking about how subtle auditory cues might be employed to encourage healthier behaviors-literally, to make healthier food sound better. If baby carrots were rebranded as “bits” or vegetable stands took a cue from Good Humor’s chirpy ice cream jingles, who knows?

I run into these Kettle Chips any time I’m in a fancy/yuppie/specialty kind of food store. I admit to not having paid attention closely over the years, but I remember them appearing as a brand of authentic old-timey traditional (i.e., “quality”) chips, and it seems that all of a sudden they’ve been coming out with crazier and crazier flavors.

This would be a good Consumed piece, don’t you think? How did the brand offering evolve to what it is now? Their website outlines their commitment to adventurous flavors, all natural, and more on the type of ingredients and preparation process. Much of that is typical for a food company, but the flavors is an interesting twist. I’m reminded of Method, who have built a story around cleaning products that are safe, not animal-tested, effective, smell good, and are packaged to look good. You can pick one or two of those (i.e., beautiful packaging) as a hook and identify with that, rather than have the whole story be important. It’s surprising to see a gourmet/quality story with unusual flavors, it’s surprising to see a safe cleanser with a gorgeous package that you can leave out. But beyond surprise is a sense that these might be the real attractors, while all that other stuff is just fine, of course.

Meanwhile, thinking about flavors reminded me of the awesome social commentary found in this riff from the Kids in the Hall:

In the beginning, there was Miracle Whip. One kind of cheese, and fish came in sticks. Bread was white, and milk was homo [there is a carton of “homo milk”]. Our condiments were mustard, relish, and ketchup. Our spices were salt, pepper, and paprika. These were our sacraments. [closes fridge]

Garlic was ethnic. Mysterious. Something out of the Arabian Nights. And then one day it happened. Food exploded. People, yeah, people put down their Alan’s Apple Juice and share of pudding, picked up a bowl of tofu, slathered it with President’s Choice spicy Thai sauce, yeah, and washed it all down with a mango-guava seltzer.

You know, there are so many new products nowadays and I confess half of them I can’t identify. I guess it’s like that with people too. You know I can’t tell a pita bread from a cactus pear or a Korean from a Filipino. I feel left behind. I do. I’m not *modern*.

I’m embarrassed to buy water in a bottle unless it’s for the iron. And I still believe– call me square but I still believe that tangerines are just for Christmas. You know what? I think it all started with marble cheese. I do! Yep. Well, think about it ’cause right after they introduced that, they came up with salt and vinegar chips. Then it was sour cream ‘n’ onion, homestyle, before you know it chips were being sold in a tuuube. Where will it all end?