names

What tiny change to a text message appointment reminder cut no-shows by 57%? All it took was adding the recipient's first name. This remarkable result hasn't been formally published, but is recounted in The Small BIG, the latest effort…

Years ago, I stopped using my middle initial on business cards, bylines, and other places. I'm not quite sure why I changed... simplicity? Google? New research shows that making that switch might have been a dumb move.

Here's a piece of potentially bad news. Your name, which you are likely stuck with for the rest of your life, can have a significant effect on whether other people believe you.

A new study by David Just and Brian Wansink of the Cornell Food & Brand Lab found that calling the same portion of spaghetti "double-size" instead of regular caused diners to eat less. In fact, the double-size group left 10 times as…

Most of us don't give much thought to what we call our product, at least in terms of category. Toothpaste is toothpaste. Cars are cars. Perhaps it's time that other businesses learn what many restaurants already know: what you call a…

WARNING: If your last name starts with a letter from R to Z, you may be more susceptible to urgent-sounding sales pitches. As a direct marketer, I tried all manners of segmenting my mailing lists. Some of the best ways to slice…

Dale Carnegie once said, "Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the English language." It's a good bet that even Carnegie would be surprised at how true that statement is, even at the unconscious…

This seems too odd to be true, but researchers at Yale and UCSD have found statistically significant differences in outcomes for individuals with names that start with different letters. Students whose names start with A or B earn higher…

"Remember that a man's name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language." So said Dale Carnegie, famed author of How to Win Friends and Influence People. As it turns out, Carnegie may have been onto something long…