Archive for November 30th, 2011

Old-timers brawl at CFL awards ceremony …

November 30, 2011

You just can’t make this stuff up …

According to the LA Times:

Two ancient legends of the Canadian Football League (no, not Warren Moon) got into a fistfight at an alumni luncheon Friday in Vancouver.

Joe Kapp, a 73-year-old former quarterback (and coach of the Cal Bears from 1982-86), punched his longtime rival Angelo Mosca, a 74-year-old defensive linemen and longtime professional wrestler.

The two have disliked other since the 1963 Grey Cup (the CFL championship game). Apparently in that game, Mosca delivered a controversial hit on Kapp’s teammate Willie Fleming, knocking him out of the game.

When Mosca and Kapp were introduced, the luncheon’s host, comedian Ron James, told Kapp to give Mosca an olive branch from a table setting as a peace offering.

Mosca, however, had an alternate suggestion as to what Kapp could do with the olive branch. Kapp didn’t care for that idea and slugged Mosca, who hit Kapp with his cane, then stumbled off the stage.

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Sorry, the other guy gets first dibs …

November 30, 2011

Punch line: Few things are more attractive than those that are unavailable or in scarce supply. Tell someone that they can’t have something, and they will be much more likely to desire it.

In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini describes a trick his brother employed to sell used cars that relied on the psychological power of scarcity. 

He would place an ad in the paper, inviting people to set up a time to look at the car. 

When the first person would call, he would set up a time to meet, say, one o’clock on the following Saturday.

When the second person would call, he would set up another meeting at exactly the same  time. The first customer would arrive and start looking at the car, skeptically kicking its tires, pointing out its flaws, working hard to  ratchet down the price.

Then, inevitably, the second customer would arrive and Cialdini’s brother would tell him to “wait  just a few minutes,” the other customer had first dibs on the car. 

Cialdini’s brother had brilliantly manipulated the situation to make  the car look popular and to ramp up people’s competitive juices. 

That’s why response rates go up when  “only the first five hundred respondents …” .

Excerpted from Free Market Madness by Peter Ubel

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