Measuring Soft-Sell Versus Hard-Sell Advertising Appeals

Preventive medicine: giving patients the hard sell.

Have you ever found yourself busily attending to a patient’s acute problem when all of a sudden a nagging voice inside your head reminds you that you haven’t yet asked the patient about that needed flu shot, Pap smear, tetanus shot or other preventive service? Although health plans and government agencies are often quick to remind us of our preventive failures, many physicians shy away from pre...

Safety Can Be a Hard Message to Sell

From 2006 to 2008, the Monash University Accident Research Centre, in conjunction with the Office of Road Safety and Department of Main Roads in Western Australia, attempted to gain the support of a Local Government Area in W.A. to implement a demonstration trial of lower speed limits, based on a new Harm Reduction approach. Attempts to gain the support made over these three years included enli...

Why is breast cancer chemoprevention such a hard sell?

Sell-Side Benchmarks

Sell-side analysts employ different benchmarks when defining their stock recommendations. For example, a ‘buy’ for some brokers means the stock is expected to outperform its peers in the same sector (“sector benchmarkers”), while for other brokers it means the stock is expected to outperform the market (“market benchmarkers”), or just some absolute return (“total benchmarkers”). We explore the ...

How to Sell Wars

On 17 March 1813 King Frederick William III of Prussia issued his appeal “to my people.” It was a call to arms for the struggle against Napoleon, a war of liberation, “...It is the final, decisive struggle that we must endure, for the sake of our existence, our independence, our fortune. There is no way out except an honorable peace, or glorious defeat.” The proclamation appeared in the newspap...