Author Archive
Popular movies like American Hustle, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Sting, and Catch Me If You Can show that audiences like a good con artist story. The films even manipulate—con?—us into rooting for the bad guy, our consciences somehow assuaged by marks who deserve or at least can afford the loss. The deserving-mark trope entertains, but in real life cons hurt […]
THIS MUCH won’t surprise you: Younger generations continue hopping aboard person-to-person payment (P2P) apps faster than older ones. But maybe this will surprise you: Better than half of Boomers are onboard with P2P. Considering P2P’s relative newness and Boomers’ measured approach to sticking toes in new technological waters, I think it’s fair to call that […]
WAY BACK—well, five years ago—when Apple introduced iPhone 5s’s thumbprint scanner, fear mongers lost no time claiming that phone thieves would now take your phone and your finger. Never mind that it wouldn’t work—irrational panic spreads faster than rational calm—and besides, what if your phone thief doesn’t know that iPhone can’t scan a dead finger? Safe as your […]
Most marketers know a push from a pull strategy. True to its name, a push strategy pushes a product the market has yet to demand. 3M brand Post-It Notes provide a great example. People the world over had no idea how badly they needed those little yellow stickies until they found themselves at wits’ end when their free, introductory supply ran […]
Some of you may recall my predicting a bright future for Zelle at last year’s Payments 2017. Indeed, Zelle has not disappointed—as you’ll see in my just-published article for The Financial Brand: Zelle on Trajectory to Crush Venmo in War for P2P Payments Since this time yesterday, the number of people enrolled in Zelle increased by 100,000. […]