lunch was a little disappointing. it was dry - a sandwich being one of the main courses. there was also pasta and grilled chicken. oh and a slightly salty pea soup.
then we had a little interesting talk by a professor jennifer aaker on the power of social networking. she told a story about how a real-life story inspired her, and overcame her reservations about the usefulness of social networking media like facebook, youtube etc. this was a case about two indians living in california diagnosed with leukemia. they needed to find bone marrow matches (i.e. someone with bone marrow similar to theirs) quickly. the problem was that ethnicity is an important factor and not many indians were registered as donors. the odds of a match were 1 in 20,000.
so their friends came up with a campaign designed to get as many people registered as quickly as possible - because the longer it takes to do the transplant, the lower the chances of success. they decided that their campaign needed to be simple and clear - instead of just saying please help, they made it clear that their goal was to hit 20,000 registrations so people had a target and also feel they were helping just by registering. otherwise the danger of just appealing for help was that there was a possibility that it would elicit a reaction in many people that well, if the odds of a match are so low, my bone marrow is unlikely to be the one. their focus was to also tell a story about the two indians so that people would feel an emotional connection, and they sent it to the most influential people so that the chances of it taking off were better. and they also let people adapt the message to other mediums. for instance, some decided to educate people so that they would not feel any apprehension about what was involved in registering, or even donating. would it be painful? was it harmful to you? and so on.
well, the campaign was successful and the two chaps received transplants but unfortunately, they both had relapses and passed away a few months later.
on a happier note, we did an exercise in which we were asked to design a social media campaign to sell more coke to teenagers. one group had a really inspiring idea for youtube in which a teenager would film himself saying, "i thirst to end world hunger (as an example)" and hands a bottle of coke offscreen. then the next person would seem to receive this bottle from offscreen and say "i thirst to end racial discrimination (or something inspiring)" and so on. isn't that brilliant? but i think you would like this other one better. this other group borrowed the idea from angry birds. instead of launching angry birds, they would launch coke cans at targets.
then the professor told us that coke actually did run a campaign and the one they went with in the end was the happiness machine. remember we watched it at home? the one where the machine hands out lots of coke, flowers, pizza and even a super long submarine sandwich. that was so much fun.
anyway, dinner tonight was outdoors at an art center.
there were many interesting pieces of sculpture by rodin inside. rodin was the chap who did "the thinker" sculpture. i read a little write up inside and he first gained fame with this piece called "the age of bronze". it was so good that he was accused of forming the sculpture by using a real live person and encasing him in bronze. this is the replica (as are all the rest of the pieces) or just a study. studies are smaller scale sculpture pieces that artists use as practice and for planning before doing the real piece.
another famous piece is "the kiss".
there are many other interesting pieces, as you can see from here
then in another part, there were paintings of the family of the founder of stanford. stanford got rich when he helped to build the railway that crosses america. he had a son who died of illness while traveling in europe when he was quite young, and stanford then decided to build the university in his memory. the following is a painting of his son, stanford's wife and other pieces.
then it was time for dinner. some vegetarian lasagna, halibut (a type of fish) and some other stuff i can't quite recall.
by the time we ended dinner, it was about 8.15 and we took a slow walk back to the schwab center. no discussion tonight! yeah!
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