Be outstanding

In the enormous stream of information it is important to attract attention to communicate your message. An organization that understands this is Greenpeace. Two of their messages caught my attention last week, and that can be seen as a victory nowadays.
First of all there was the rebranding competition for BP. Now that the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is still polluting the environment and BP has plans to invest in tar sands, the dirtiest oil currently, Greenpeace found it time to change the nice flower logo into something more fitting and asked people to design and send in a new logo. An interactive and nice way to create attention for a problem.
Secondly, I stumbled across a Dutch campaign in which the environmental plans from some of the political leaders and their party are compared. Not just by a list but also with a website called "with bared buttocks" a proverb that best can be explained as showing what you have got, in this case their election plans. On the website you can choose a leader and he or she will dress down until he or she is naked and you can see the number of the place on the list.
These examples are two simple ways to communicate something not so extraordinary in an attractive way. Greenpeace is doing a good job with their communication because who does not remember the KitKat movie. An important capacity for an organisation or business to be heard.

The right price

The prices of sports tickets are usually fixed at the beginning of a season, but what if a team is over- or underachieving? In the first case it could be that the demand of tickets rises above the supply. On the other hand if a team is underachieving people are likely to stay away. Or what to think about other factors like holidays, the weather or the opponent. Until now none of these aspects were weighed into the prices.
Barry Kahn developed software that makes it possible to create a flexible pricing system. His company, Qcue, determines the right price for a seat by taking a number of variables in account. "Pricing is critical, but it has always been a guessing game," Kahn said. "We're providing the capability to do something about it, and we think it's going to change the whole way that tickets are sold"(Statesman.com).
American baseball team the San Francisco Giants are using the software this season and it already helped them raise their revenues by 12%. Furthermore, their attendance increased with 7%, even though the attendances overall in the Major League of Baseball are slightly declining. Giant's ticketing chief Russ Stanley says Kahn "changing the ticketing world" and he predicts market-based pricing in the entire league within Five years. On this moment every team is keeping an eye on the development and also tams from other sports are going to use the system.

Not only the teams benefit by the system, there are advantages for visitors as well. They can choose to pay some more for a better seat and less important matches will be priced comparatively attractive.
Future will determine if this is yet another way of technology advancing business.