Breaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day.

Toyota Aims High, Prices Low With Prius c. Toyota has high sales hopes for its cheapest hybrid, the Prius c, gearing up to launch in the U.S. in March. The company's goal is to sell 40,000 units this year to "younger buyers." Honda tried to hit that sweet spot last year, with the Insight, but fell short of its goal of 90,000 units annually with 20,962 in its best year. --NS

--Updated 8:10 a.m. EST

Japan Wants 30% Cut In Rare Earth Use In Two Years. To free the country from China's control on rare earths, Japan is planning a 30% cut in consumption of the heavy rare earth dysprosium that's used in electronics and hybrid cars. (The DOE has a plan too.) The government is budgeting $65 million to help companies scale back their needs by recycling existing element or by developing methods to avoid using it entirely. --NS

--Updated 6:40 a.m. 

Google's Chrome App-ed For Android. At long last, Google has announced an app version of their web browser Chrome, for the Google-made mobile OS, Android. Out in beta for now, the app only runs on the latest version of the OS, Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich. --NS

Anonymous Leaks Syrian Government Emails. Hacker group Anonymous accessed and published several messages from the the email inboxes of Syria's president and government aides. The groups also posted the passwords (most of them were "12345") of all the accounts. --NS

Nokia Moving Manufacturing To Asia. Nokia is moving much of its European assembly and manufacturing to Asia, after cutting 4,000 jobs in Mexico, Hungary and Finland. The move is intended to speed up delivery and streamline manufacturing by being closers to their Asian suppliers. --NS

Pinterest Hits 10 Million Users. Pinterest is beginning to do wonders for retailers selling everything from yoga to yogurt, and just passed a milestone of 10 million unique U.S. visitors per month. According to ComScore, Pinterest's the fast growing single site to hit that mark. --NS

--Updated 5:45 a.m. EST

[Image: Flickr user Palinopsia Films]

Yesterday's Fast Feed: Yahoo Board Shakeup, Google Ready To "Solve For X," Brazil Petitions Twitter To Block Speed Trap Tweets, and more!

The other day I sat with three senior leaders from three different industries. One was the CEO of an international PR and communications firm. One was a partner of a professional services firm, and the other the president of a national not-for-profit. As it often does, our discussion about work and life turned to technology. I asked them how they used their smartphones and laptops to stay connected to work after traditional business hours:

”I keep my phone on 24/7, but I don’t respond to everything, all the time.”--CEO of the PR and communications firm.

“I sometimes send emails at 4 a.m., and on the weekends just to get a jump-start on my day and week.”--president of the national not-for-profit.

“My phone goes in my briefcase when I get home and I don’t look at it again until the next morning.”--partner of a professional services firm.

Three leaders, with three very different uses of technology. So I asked them, “How many of you have sat down with all of your direct reports and explained how you prefer to connect with work, and specified what you expect of them?”

All three shook their heads and said some variation of the following statement, “No, I haven’t done that, but they all know that I don’t expect them to do what I do.” My response was, “I’ll bet that isn’t true,” and I shared what I see too often in many organizations:

Leaders fail to clarify their personal preferences for staying connected to work with technology, and don’t share their expectations of the responsiveness with their direct reports. This leads to misguided assumptions that can wreak havoc on the work/life balance of their employees. And most leaders have no idea any of this is happening.

Here’s my advice:

Recognize that you have to initiate the conversation with your direct reports. They won’t because they don’t want you to misinterpret their questions as, “I don’t want to work hard.” For example, I worked with a senior leader who always caught the 5:00 a.m. bus to the office. On his ride, he did all of his emails and was so pleased that his team were "morning people, too--they get right back to me!" Imagine his surprise when I told him, “Actually, many are setting alarms for 5 a.m. to be awake and reply to you.” “What?!” he responded, “Why didn’t they say anything?” To the person, they all told me they were afraid he would question their commitment if they did.

Decide what you really expect in terms of response and connection. Part of the problem is that leaders are so busy using technology to manage their own work/life balance that they haven’t thought about what they actually expect from their team. The leader who emailed from the bus at 5:00 a.m. told everyone that if he really needed them he’d call their mobile phones. If an email was priority, he’d identify it. Otherwise feel free to respond whenever they can.

Have a meeting, state the parameters clearly, and then be consistent. People watch the behavior of leaders like a hawk. If there’s even a whiff of inconsistency between what you told them and how you actually behave, they will go back to assuming they need to follow your technology schedule. So if you state, “You don’t need to respond to emails at night, I’ll call you if anything is urgent,” don’t penalize someone who missed an important issue because they didn’t answer an email, but were never called.

Finally, keep the lines of communication open and encourage ongoing clarification. Assumptions people make about their manager’s expectations are rarely accurate, especially when it comes to connection and access to work via technology. Set the record straight. It’s an easy way to offer your people more control and consistency over the way work fits into their lives--something we all need.

If you’re a manager, have you clarified your expectations of access and connectedness with your direct reports? If you haven’t, why not? If you did, what did you learn? What difference did it make?

Cali Williams Yost is the CEO and Founder of the Flex+Strategy Group / Work+Life Fit, Inc., flexible work and life strategy advisors to clients including BDO, LLP, Pearson, Inc., EMC, the U.S. Navy, Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Novo Nordisk. Yost is the author of “Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You” (Riverhead/Penguin Group, 2005). Connect with Cali at the award-winning Work+Life Fit blog and on Twitter @caliyost. 

[Image: Flickr user Amir Jina]

How do you create an app that helps users discover new foods? In this extended version of the conversation from our latest issue, we chat with Alexa Andrzejewski, the CEO of Foodspotting.

Photo by Toby Burditt

"When you recommend a restaurant dish, you're asking people to commit time and money to actually trying it. So there's a risk they will get mad at you if they don't like it. We get that. That's why, instead of telling users to eat one thing from one restaurant, our Foodspotting app gives them options, and we're transparent about our process. We explain, very clearly, why Foodspotting is showing each food to them--maybe a critic they like recommended the dish, maybe the flavor profile is similar to another dish they often eat--but what to eat is totally up to them. Eventually, we may be able to offer up single recommendations. But you have to wonder if people would even trust us. Maybe, with food especially, they like to have choices."

Fast Company: Where did you get the idea for Foodspotting?

Alexa Andrzejewski: I was inspired by traveling to Japan and learning about how many interesting dishes there are out there that I didn't even know existed. I came back and I wanted to share these interesting finds with people and also find them locally, but I realized there was no way to use existing apps to search for a specific dish. So if I was looking for Japanese curry, or even a milkshake, there was no way to find the best milkshake in San Francisco. So it just seemed like such an obvious opportunity.

What's tricky about recommending food?

Food preferences are something very personal. I don't even like the same foods that the rest of the Foodspotting team likes, even though we work together and see each other the most. I think a lot of apps focus on social recommendations above everything else; with food, social is just a part of it, so it's really important to not weigh social signals too highly, rather than finding out which people actually have the same taste as you.

So who else do people trust?

Expert recommendations have a lot more sway than you realize. In San Francisco, 7x7 publishes this list of "100 Things To Try Before You Die," which has been incredibly influential on the dishes that everybody [in San Francisco] knows and recommends. We realized that's an important decision-making factor, knowing that something is Michelin-recommended or Zagat-rated. So we try to surface that information as well. When it comes to deciding what to eat, people prioritize personal taste, celebrities, and then maybe friends.

How do recommendations from an algorithm play into that trust?

One of the big things our users have said is that they don't necessarily trust recommendations from algorithms; they trust word-of-mouth. And that was an interesting insight: that word-of-mouth is how most people make decisions about eating day to day. It's not by checking an app--it's about some shaved ice place that everyone talks about. We're trying to replicate that experience of word-of-mouth on Foodspotting. We're not trying to be "magically smart" with our recommendations--we're trying to use what we know about people to find good matches for them. I love ramen, for example, and I'm going to be impressed when Foodspotting says, "You like ramen? Here's great ramen," even though I know it's doing something relatively simple.

Read more Fast Talk

If 2008 was the year that Facebook and YouTube cracked the mainstream in politics, then 2012 will be the year that most every other digital tool breaks the dam wide open on the campaign scene. It's no longer enough for politicians to just be on Twitter--now almost all serious candidates aiming for a seat in Washington must be on Tumblr, Google+, Foursquare, and more.

"I think people who vote for us will watch our videos, share them on Twitter or Facebook or elsewhere, and maybe never go to our website," says Zac Moffatt, digital director for the Mitt Romney campaign. "That's very, very different from any other time in our history."

When the Republican front-runner released his jobs plan, for example, he introduced it to the public as a Kindle Book. Using Pay With A Tweet, the social payment system, constituents could download a copy if they tweeted about it--an exchange to help Romney's jobs plan go viral. "It got us to No. 9 on the best-seller nonfiction list," Moffatt says. "And I'm not going to lie: A 120-page jobs plan does not normally become a top 10 Amazon Kindle read."

In other words, to reach modern-day voters, campaigns are more and more appealing to digital networks and advertising rather taking traditional routes. Here's how Moffatt sees the field shaping up in the rest of 2012.

Square: Empowering Mobile Fundraising

"We've been looking at this for a long time," says Moffatt of Square, the device that lets users accept credit card payments on smartphones and tablets. Both the Romney and Obama campaigns adopted the service in January for fundraising.

"The long-term goal would obviously be that you could have supporters download the Mitt Romney Square app, so that money routes directly to Romney's campaign--people can be empowered to do what they need to do," Moffatt says. "It could be huge. No one is going to argue that mobile is not going to be a massive part of the future, but the question is whether it hits critical mass in 2012."

Instagram: Still Too Early?

President Obama may have joined Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app, last month, but Moffatt has hesitated to sign up Romney. With 15 million (global iPhone) users on the service, the question remains whether it has enough reach to make an impact. The same could be argued of Foursquare, Google+, and other up-and-coming social networks. "I would love for us to do more with Instagram, but the challenge is what level of availability you could provide," Moffatt says. "I don't know if you'd get on Instagram and say, 'Okay, now I think we're going to win the election.'"

Twitter: It's About Engagement, Stupid

Much has been made about Twitter follow counts, from Newt Gingrich's peculiarly high 1.4 million followers to the massive reach of Obama's 12.3 million followers. The Romney campaign boasts just about 325,000 followers.

But Moffatt says going forward campaigns will pay less attention to the number of followers one has (though clearly that is an important metric), and more attention to the level of engagement. The Romney campaign pays attention to its average number of retweets, the percentage of its followers who have retweeted at least one piece of content, and the reach and influence (or Klout) of their own followers. "They are people who become a part of our community," Moffatt says. "So that's why when we talk about engagement--for me that would be the criteria--if I saw that start to drop, I'd start to get really nervous."

DVR And The "On-Demanders"

Roughly 75% to 80% of campaign advertising is on paid media and TV, says Moffatt, which is why DVR and TiVo are making it increasingly difficult for campaigns to effectively reach viewers through advertising. "There are people who no longer watching real-time television other than sports; we call them 'On-Demanders,'" Moffatt says. "Our argument in 2012 is: How do you find people who don't watch live TV? How do you talk to people who otherwise would be missed?"

Working with a digital advertising firm in Florida, the Romney campaign did what Moffatt calls "off the grid targeting," or advertising targeted toward constituents likely to fast forward through commercials. "We actually ran a massive online advertising campaign in Florida just at people who would otherwise not see our TV spots," Moffatt says. Who knows if the target group will ever be big as soccer moms were for the Clinton campaign in 1996, but it can't hurt.

Don't Forget The Importance Of Google AdWords

GOP hopeful Rick Santorum certainly knows why. But in all seriousness, Google AdWords is likely one of the most powerful tools for intent-based marketing. The Romney campaign has used it not just for basic keywords, but for contrast marketing.

In Florida, for example, a search for "Newt Gingrich" would've turned up ad results for the Romney campaign. "We do it all the time in different locations," Moffatt says. "We bid against people names. The balance you're going to find with the algorithm is the relevancy and what you're willing to bid for. It's always going to be challenging for someone to bid on Mitt Romney's name and to be above us in the bid because we spend a lot of time focusing on SEO, and we spent a year building this. But we find we can bid on other people's sites because they not have put that amount of time in."

Geo-targeting has become especially important, too, with ads customized depending on one's location and access point (whether via a laptop or mobile device). "If you're in Sioux City, Iowa, you're getting an endorsement message from Senator [John] Thune because he's in South Dakota, and his market rolls over in that area that supports Mitt," Moffatt says. "On mobile phone you're getting a different message, either 'click to call a caucus' or to get direction."

Adds Moffatt, "These are simple little things that make all the world of difference."

[Image: Flickr user Daniel Olines]

There’s a vast expanse between the transactional moment when a consumer likes, friends, or follows a site and the instant that same consumer becomes a brand evangelist, entering into a state of emotional commitment.

The former isn’t difficult to achieve; observe how many sites have hundreds of thousands of friends, very few of whom feel any real passion for the brand, or would go out of their way to recommend it to somehow (least of all defend it in a the social-media equivalent of a barroom brawl.)

The latter is the bell-ringing marketing challenge of today. It’s not surprising that there isn’t more deep-down devotion among the millions of superficial friends and followers. Most brands do very little to cultivate a more meaningful, psychologically grounded relationship.  

Sure, they can convince a consumer to step into the friend category through some form of social or economic quid pro quo--become a friend and get a discount, or get a badge or incentive. But they do very little after that to create a co-equal, honest relationship that has feels personally and not algorithmically generated.  

There’s a ton of work being done on how to measure and track true “engagement” on Facebook, and elsewhere. Mashable recently identified three important metrics that brands should use as markers for success: Track “People Are Talking About,” Track “Engaged Users,” and Track “External Referrers." 

These are all perfectly useful, if not important, criteria and filters. And they are far better metrics than simply adding up the popular vote. But looking beyond the sheer numbers is one only challenge. The other challenge is to understand what ignites evangelism--from the point of view of psychological affinity, message content, stylistic posture, communication cadence, and of course, financial rewards.

Here are six new rules of engagement, based upon an analysis of brand successes, behavioral psychology, and trends in consumer marketing and the social context. Nothing here is all that complicated; they are fundamentals of human psychodynamics, ported to the digital setting. But it’s tough for companies and brands to adapt to them because, well, corporations have a hard time inhabiting human skin.  

That’s not surprising; corporate structure and organization is largely part based upon taking subjectivity out of the decision calculus, and imposing a set of processes that attempt to systematize behavior, and through that, reduce risk.

But nothing here should be that strenuous for companies that truly want armadas of evangelists (to mix a metaphor) on their side.

1. You See Numbers, People See Themselves

Marketers who are trained in the nuances of insightful segmentation and consumer nuances seem to forget all that when marketing through social media. They blast one message to hundreds of thousands of people.  Even millions.  But creating a brand evangelist starts with a personal connection, and personal connections can’t be built with impersonal messaging.  Acquiring giant quantities of friends makes this more difficult, but the growth of Big Data and customer intelligence solutions makes it possible.

2. When People Share Values, They’ll Share A Lot More

Brands today are complex, impressionistic constructions of product, performance, perceptions, and belief systems. More and more, brands are taking stands on social and even political issues; companies like Whole Foods  and The Container Store, for example, are active members of the Conscious Capitalism movement.

Brands can also share values through the choices they make in how they communicate. Style is substantive. Zappos is widely regarded as brilliantly adept at creating wildly devotional brand partisans, and the Twitter feed of its CEO, Tony Hsieh, is a large part of that.

Here’s a perfect example of that; a Tweet he made last July. No sell, no offer, in fact, an anti-consumption message: Want happiness? Don't buy more stuff--go on vacation!

It was preceded by a Tweet about research on getting kids to consume more vegetables, and a quote from Ann Frank.  This random glimpse into the mind of a CEO displays an emotional transparency that builds loyalty. You know that it wasn’t rubber-stamped by a Twitter Approval Sub-Committee.

So social media is the ultimate platform for communicating your values and energizing people around them. Of course, you can’t satisfy everyone, but the process of creating brand acolytes means that you cannot be equally meaningful to everyone. Deal with it.

3. Lameness Can’t Create Loyalty

Have you noticed how much social media is represented by Tweets and posts like this triteness display from McDonald’s:

Morning! How's everyone's week going so far?

24 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply

Would you want to be friends, and hang out with someone who always feels obligated to spout something, even when they have absolutely nothing of interest on their minds? So if you want to create evangelists, start with being excruciatingly demanding about every single thing you say. And how you say it.

4. Real Friends Don’t Impose--Unless There’s a Good Reason

Offline relationships are the psychological model for brand “friendships.” Well, before you ask a friend for a favor, you think through the implications. How important is it to you? How difficult or emotionally fraught might it be your friend to act on your request? When does the request over-stretch the implicit boundaries of the relationship?

Brands need to go through the same social calculus, but they seldom do. So a brand will ask you to forward something to a friend, or invite a friend to join a group, without really thinking through the implications.  They are pushing hard, if not violating, the natural limits of the “friendship”--and then they are surprised when they don’t get the results they expected.

To create evangelists who are ready, willing and able to use their social graphs to advance your brand, you need to develop some rules of reciprocity, and real customer intelligence about which of your current fans and friends are most likely to share. For example, those who have large networks, and high Klout scores, might be better evangelist than those who keep to themselves. But are you treating them all the same?

5. Surprise Everyone, Including Yourself

We become emotionally attached to those who bring unexpected twists and surprises to our lives. That’s because disruptive surprise and intrigue release dopamine, which creates pleasure (and its evil cousin, addiction.) Insufficient novelty creates dopamine boredom.   

Surprise can be the way you say something (style) or what you give them as far as rewards or incentives go (content). It’s a rich area for innovation.

Trouble is, many big brands see surprise as a risk, because it requires unexpected behaviors, which by definition, haven’t been done before and might be considered “off-brand.” Dopamine boredom is always safe. Hence the paradox of evangelists: to create them, you need to push on the limits of institutional norms. But if you do so, and surprise them and yourself in the process, you might actually find your dopamine will be flowing as much as theirs.  

6. Go Out Of Your Way For People, and They’ll Go Out of Their Way for You

One of the most powerful ways to create evangelists is to behave with breathtaking responsiveness. Many are halfway there. Increasingly, more and more companies are turning to social media to address customer service issues. So we’re seeing tons of responses like this from Target:

@XTEDDIX That's frustrating! Thanks for letting us know. We'll be passing your comments along to our Store Leadership team. Matthew

But what we’re not seeing are a lot of results. The average friend or fan is exposed to a torrent of problems, not solutions. So in the interests of being a responsive organization, brands can come across as customer-service train wrecks.

Wouldn’t it be cool if a brand posted, each day, the resolution of its most triumphant, confounding, and amusing customer services issues.  

These little human-interest packages would be terrifically entertaining to read, and would create evangelists by demonstrating corporate flexibility, a stop-at-nothing obsession with consumer satisfaction. So even if the experience didn’t touch you directly, you feel touched by it.

It’s a form of social osmosis, which, like the other five rules I’ve described, can turn the passivity of fandom to the activism of discipledom.

For more leadership coverage, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

[Image: Flickr user carlo cravero]

Whether you’re digging your way out of a negative PR avalanche or simply need to scrub a less-than-squeaky-clean outburst, here are tips from branding experts on how to handle public outrage with grace and style.

So you torpedoed your brand. Or maybe you just want to learn how to handle a media sh*tstorm like the one that ensued when Susan G. Komen For The Cure announced it wouldn’t renew its grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer exams. 

Though Komen For The Cure reversed its decision to pull about half a million in funding for low-income women to receive breast-cancer screening only three days later, it’s going to take a lot of elbow grease to remove the black marks now marring all its pink ribbons. And while the Komen dustup doesn’t tip the ethics scale like BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, according to the MIT Sloan Management Review, the negative effects of such events have a substantially greater impact on consumer willingness to pay than the positive effects of ethical behavior.

Whether you’re digging your way out of a similar mess or simply need to soap a less-than-squeaky-clean outburst (ahem, Giselle), here are some tips from branding experts on how to handle the public’s outrage with grace and style.

1. Own Up To Your Mistakes

No one knows this better than Mikkel Svane, CEO of Zendesk. The cloud-based helpdesk software company nearly caused a riot among its 10,000 clients in 100 countries last year with the launch of a series of new features and changed cost structure. Svane and his team took a breath before diving in (with its own software solution) and addressing all the complaints. Now that things have cooled off and customers are once again satisfied, Svane says that "building a business, especially at this pace, you are making mistakes all the time. The best thing a company can do is embrace its mistakes."

2. Use Empathy

One of the first things to do after acknowledging the mistake is to show empathy. Let them (your constituents, customers, user base, etc.) know you care about how they feel and that you want to know how they feel, says Rebecca Saeger, executive vice president and CMO at Charles Schwab.

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3. Show Vulnerability

Lady Gaga may not be the first person who comes to mind when you need first aid for PR disasters (think meat dress, refusing Al Yankovic the right to spoof, numerous public stumbles in airports on vertiginous heels) but she sure knows how to keep millions of fans hooked. 

Her secret sauce? Spilling “secrets.” Gaga’s never been shy about revealing her foibles to the growing throng of “Little Monsters,” as she calls her fan base. Sharing her imperfections allows fans to relate to Gaga, and in doing so she also manages to unite them in a tightly knit tribe. If your brand is becoming disconnected from humanity, it’s time to take a lesson from Gaga’s authenticity. 

4. Don’t Use Traditional Media to Quash a Social Media Frenzy

Let BP stand as an example for companies of any size on what NOT to do before, during, or after a disaster. Dogged pursuit of its "Beyond Petroleum" rebranding, the deep-green position was at serious odds with a lousy environmental record that included refinery explosions, the devastating Prudhoe Bay spill, and the Gulf disaster. 

To make things worse, BP’s PR efforts were mostly contained to TV and newspaper ads. The estimated $100 million spend to stem damage to its reputation was pitted against social media such as the Boycott BP page on Facebook that received three quarters of a million "Likes" and essentially allowed negative conversations around their brand to rage unchecked on the web.

When social networks allow people to bypass traditional media outlets and talk among themselves, it’s time to come up with a sound strategy for steering the conversation. That’s what David All, president of the David All Group, did when hired by South Carolina's Congressman Joe Wilson, who stepped into the glare of the media spotlight when he shouted "You lie," to President Obama during his health care address.

"Twitter is not the end-all, be-all, but it proved to be another tool to help us achieve our online goals. We used it to share information with influencers, help shape the debate, listen to the conversation as a real-time focus group to gauge our response, set the tone that we were fighting back with social media, and to essentially get our side of the story out.”

5. Own Your Search Results--Positive and Negative

Ever try to Google “Santorum?” Instead of getting the website of the presidential hopeful, the first result is a fake definition of "santorum." The term for a sexual byproduct was fixed in the firmament of Google search results back in 2003, when Santorum outraged the gay and lesbian community when he appeared to tell a reporter that gay sex was not entitled to privacy protections, and could therefore be banned by the government. And 2007 was the year when "miserable failure" searches began pointing to a biography of George W. Bush.  

While Google maintains control and hasn’t agreed to manually remove such pages, companies could fend off similar attacks by taking charge of SEO and owning search results--good and bad. Toyota grabbed the Google bull by the horns during its $7 billion brand crisis when the company was forced to recall more than 5 million of its faulty vehicles in May 2010. That’s when plaintiffs' attorneys turned to the web in droves to recruit class action litigants and cement the perception that Toyota had acted irresponsibly.

At the height of the recalls, a Google search for the term "Toyota recall" displayed 10 paid advertisements with Toyota at the top spot. It also had dedicated Google adwords campaigns (SEM) for terms such as "Toyota Recall," "Toyota Problems," and "Toyota Issues,” a strategy that allowed the company to buy the negative terms about itself, not just positive or generic ones.

6. Weigh Your Options Before Making a Hasty Decision

Lowe’s Home Improvement and KAYAK.com pulled their ads from The Learning Channel’s All-American Muslim in a knee-jerk response to pressure from the one-man fundamentalist group known as the Florida Family Association. Lisa Mabe, founder and principal of Hewar Social Communications, says it never pays to pull the trigger too quickly, but make such decisions thoughtfully, especially while the storms are raging. “One lesson here is to carefully consider the credibility of the individuals or companies doing the complaining in the first place. Often times we see a lot of noise from groups who aren’t even shoppers at the company in question,” says Mabe.

Did you get all that? If not, here’s a 30 Second MBA video recap of how to address social media storms head on from Mitchell Harper, cofounder of BigCommerce.com.

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Now it's your turn. What leadership lessons have you taken from PR debacles? Tweet us @FastCoLeaders with the hashtag #FCweighin to join the conversation, or leave a comment below.

[Image: Flickr user Nimrodcooper]

A neuroscience technology breakthrough at the University of California, Berkeley, has major implications for the future of branding and marketing.

It finally happened. Neuroscience technology can now reliably read our minds. It’s an accepted fact that is no longer in dispute. Scientists working at the University of California, Berkeley, have successfully decoded brain activities into audible sounds. In other words, our inner thoughts can be translated into sounds clearly articulated by a computer. Needless to say, there are a whole lot of caveats attached to this claim. For a start, in order to make this kind of reading possible, it requires some 256 electrodes be surgically attached to the scalps of at least 15 volunteers. Furthermore, there’s a minefield of ethical issues attached to this endeavor that needs to be sorted out.

A couple of years ago I wrote Buyology, a book on neuromarketing that was based on 2,000 fMRI scans of volunteers’ brains. Thus I have witnessed firsthand the amazing results and the future that the neuroscientific approach is leading us to. As fascinating as it is, it can also be quite scary--particularly when combined with marketing. So, wearing my skeptic’s hat for just a moment, let me consider these questions: Will this new mind-reading research be the answer to the prayers of every advertising mogul and mainstream marketer? Will it finally provide the answer to the conundrum posed by John Wanamaker, the father of modern marketing, who famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Maybe. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The scientists in Berkeley focused on the brain’s temporal lobe--the home of the body’s auditory system--rather than the place where thoughts are formed. Although our inner voice tends to be dominated by less-articulated thoughts, it appears to be what drives our decision-making processes.

There are several companies already in the neuromarketing business--here are a couple we've previously covered: »NeuroFocus Uses Neuromarketing To Hack Your Brain »Campbell's Soup Neuromarketing Redux: There's Chunks of Real Science in That Recipe

Take, for example, knocking on wood. Do you catch yourself doing it whenever you wish to ward off the gremlins of fate? There's a 70% chance you do. I cited this figure in my most recent book, Brandwashed. Assuming this is part of what you do, I then want to know if it in fact works for you? How would you feel if I told you that I’ve conducted a study proving it’s a waste of time? I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised. But here’s the rub: would you continue doing it? Chances are you would. That's what my study turned up.

Logic does not have much to do with it. And this fact is at the core of the endless challenge to marketers. How else could one explain why eight out of 10 new product releases fail despite countless hours of focus groups and exhaustive market research? That's because the research fails to shed further light on advertisers’ vexed questions regarding what ad should be run on which particular media. It seems that there’s never been more doubt.

Now if you combine the Berkeley research with other recent studies, the picture becomes more fascinating. Take the study conducted by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, which reveals that our decisions are made up to 10 seconds before we become aware of them. In that study, participants could freely decide if they wanted to press a button with their right or left hand. The only condition required that they remembered that decision. While making that very decision, scientists used fMRI to scan the brains of the participants. They were looking to see whether they could in fact predict which hand the participants would use before they were consciously aware of their own decision.

By monitoring the micro patterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex, the scientists could predict which hand the participant would choose seven seconds before the participant was aware of the decision. In an interview with Wired, John-Dylan Haynes, the coauthor of the study, said, “Your decisions are strongly prepared by brain activity. By the time consciousness kicks in, most of the work has already been done.”

With the recent findings made by the neuroscientists at Berkeley and those from the Max Planck Institute, does this mean that the “buy-button” has arrived? Not exactly--and, may I add, thank goodness. Reading our consumer mind is somewhat creepy. However, on the upside, many of the more dated research techniques (questionnaires, for example) are dying a natural death. Questionnaires believe emotions can be determined by "yes" or "no" questions, with a few extra lines to scribble in a more detailed explanation.

The days of relying on one source to draw an empirical conclusion are well and truly gone.

No single questionnaire or focus group, interview panel, or ethnographic visit will provide all the answers. Just as we know that to bake a cake requires numerous ingredients combined in specific quantities, so do we require a combination of factors and studies to achieve levels of accuracy that Wanamaker did not believe possible.

This leads me back to the vexing ethical questions. As someone who sits on both sides of the fence--I’m a brand guy as well as a consumer--I’ve naturally given this much thought. Even better, I’ve asked more than 2,000 consumers to share their views. And no, I did not subject them to brain scans. But this is a topic that cannot be covered in a concluding paragraph or two. Instead I’ll discuss it fully next week--and the results will startle you. Stay tuned.

[Image: Flickr user SMI Eye Tracking]

Read more by Lindstrom: What CEOs Can Learn From Siberian Teenagers

Martin Lindstrom is a 2009 recipient of TIME Magazine's "World's 100 Most Influential People" and author of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Doubleday, New York), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best–seller. His latest book, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, was published in September. A frequent advisor to heads of numerous Fortune 100 companies, Lindstrom has also authored 5 best-sellers translated into 30 languages. More at martinlindstrom.com.

Meet Sen Sugano, Director of Business Development at the dinner-with-strangers startup.

GrubWithUs, founded in 2010, has a simple vision: Bring strangers together for a classy meal at a restaurant, and help them make new friends. The startup just launched a website redesign today. Fast Company called up Sen Sugano, GrubWithUs’s director of business development, to talk about the new directions for the young company. Cheers!

FAST COMPANY: It’s a shame we’re not meeting in real life, over a meal.

SEN SUGANO: The real-life movement is not our idea, but we definitely see ourselves as one of the pioneers of it. Companies like Meetup are trying to get people offline as well.

So how exactly does GrubWithUs work? Is it all curated?

We arrange everything. We have over 700 restaurant partnerships across the nation. Everything is prepaid in advance. You eat, you socialize, and at the end of a meal, you can get up and leave. The bill is paid for, including tax and gratuity, so there’s no awkward check-splitting.

People can meet at bars. What is it about meeting over food that makes for a better experience?

My first GrubWithUs meal, I don’t even know how to explain it. It was amazing. The person sitting across from me was a South Side Chicago girl, and the guy to the left of me was an i-banker. I was just thinking, when would this ever happen? This is such an eclectic group. There’s something about the dinner table that makes people come together. There’s just something about passing plates that eases tension. And at the end of the day, you can always talk about the food.

Your own background is in urban planning. How does it relate?

In urban planning you study how the built environment shapes society. For example, in walkable communities, there are more people talking to people on the street. GrubWithUs fits with this because it’s about building social capital for communities. We’re so disconnected, and we don’t talk to our neighbors. Essentially social capital is dying, and GrubWithUs is building it up again. All of those things tie back to what I studied, and are what makes me love the company.

Your job is to grow the business. But how do you scale intimacy?

We recently launched a create-your-own feature. The reason we’re moving towards a user-generated model is because it’s obviously scalable. We also do things like book tours: Rory Freedman, author of Skinny Bitch, hosted a meal to get to know her readers. We’re working with bands, musicians, and talent agencies to essentially do the same. We also work with some larger conferences and conventions. Those meals are much larger, but we do eight-person tables. We’ll do private meals for birthday parties and alumni groups.

Don’t you run the risk of just becoming another catering company?

I don’t foresee that. At the end of the day, we’ve defined ourselves as being about social dining. The majority of our meals will always be about meeting new people.

For some people, is GrubWithUs really a crypto-dating service?

We’re not about dating, but that’s not to say it hasn’t happened. We had two users in Chicago who would use the site maybe once or even twice a week. Then both of them suddenly disappeared, and we were like, “What happened to them?” We emailed them personally and said, “Hey, we notice you haven’t been around. Is everything OK?” The guy responded and said, “Oh yeah, sorry, I actually met so-and-so”--and it happened to be the girl--“at a meal, and we started dating, so we’re having our alone time, but we’ll be grubbing again soon.”

It’s bittersweet: if you do your job too well, you lose your customers.

That’s kind of true. Hopefully in the future, we’ll be the go-to source for any social dining. We’ve started doing couples meals.

This interview has been condensed and edited. For more from the Fast Talk interview series, click here.

Follow Fast Company on Twitter. Think you'd make a good Fast Talk subject? Mention it to David Zax.

[Image: Flickr user Rich Moffitt]

Yesterday Coinstar, the parent company of Redbox, the 35,400-kiosk-strong movie-rental service, announced a joint venture with Verizon to provide a subscription-based streaming video service, thus positioning the companies in direct competition with Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Coinstar also announced that it would acquire NCR's entertainment business, which includes its former rival Blockbuster Express, adding more than 9,000 kiosks to Redbox's roster around the country.

Now new details about the combined companies' plans have emerged. First, it's clear the companies are adamant about bringing a combined physical and digital offering to market, rather than streaming-only or DVD-only plans like Netflix. "To have a partner that sees our vision, and thinks, yes, you could do something streaming-only, but we'll be so much more successful to consumers if we have both together--that was really what Verizon's take was," says Scott Di Valerio, CFO of Coinstar and interim CEO of Redbox. "Streaming is great--it's really exciting," Di Valerio told us yesterday, "[but] we think there is a bright future in physical."

Still, specifics surrounding what Redbox's future might look like are sparse--company executives remained especially vague during yesterday's earnings call for competitive reasons, they said. And other than a brand-new website called RedboxVerizonProject.com, which teases that "something fun is coming," few details have been released about Redbox's upcoming subscription service with Verizon, slated to be unveiled in the second half of 2012.

Asked whether the subscription service, then, would include DVDs-by-kiosk or possibly DVDs-by-mail, Di Valerio says the company does "not have a vision of doing a by-mail service. Think about a subscription where you have 'Nights at the Kiosk' for new release content, and then be able to have your streaming--more of your library content."

Meanwhile Redbox SVP of finance, Galen Smith, indicated that kiosks will definitely be a part of the subscription, though it's not yet clear whether this will be an unlimited offering. "The core will involve both things, because Verizon could do streaming today on their own--they don't need physical," he says. "But they see our unique set of assets and the physical discs that consumers want. So I think it's safe to assume that the core product will include both."

"Consumers made it clear that they like both the physical disc as well as the digital," Paul Davis, CEO of Coinstar, tells Fast Company. "Given the fact that we have approximately 30 million consumers, and that we are [located] where people go every day--gas stations, convenient stores, supermarkets, drug stores--the instant access to our discs is a real compelling benefit, versus Netflix, where you put what you want in the movie queue, and then you have to wait a few days and hope it comes. We remove that mystery. We really allow consumers to get what they want on new releases, and then for those who want older movies--a more catalog offering--they can get that as well through what we'll be offering as a part of the joint venture."

And what about video games?

"We haven't talked about specific products," Di Valerio says, "but the way I would say it is that rental nights or 'Nights at the Kiosk' will be a kind of center point. And what do we have in our kiosks? Standard [DVDs], Blu-ray, and video games."

In terms of cost, consumers should anticipate competitive pricing with what's already been brought to market. The company stressed "affordability" throughout its announcement, follow-up conference call, and subsequent earnings call. "That's what our customers expect from us, though we haven't announced any of the pricing of the products yet," Gary Cohen, SVO of marketing and experience, tells Fast Company.

During the announcement and conference call, both Verizon and Redbox also stressed that their description would be limited to "subscription services and more." But when asked what the companies meant by "services" plural, Smith says he "wouldn't read into that."

"I would think about it as a subscription service that combines physical and digital," he says.

Asked whether the subscription will be under the Redbox or Verizon brand, it seems there will be a new brand created under the joint venture, à la Netflix-Qwiskter (although definitely not Qwikster). "I don't think it'll necessarily be a Redbox or Verizon brand but one that the [joint venture] brings out," Di Valerio says.

Lastly, in terms of content, executives have said that a wide array of titles will be available through the subscription. The company is not against competing for exclusive content deals with competitors such as HBO and Netflix, though the company declined to say whether there would be a focus on TV shows or movies. The companies plan to feature new releases in the kiosk outlets, it seems, while leaving longer-tail content for online streaming--but don't let them hear you call it "long-tail" content.

"When we say long tail, we mean that it's just not a new release," Di Valerio says. "We think about new releases in our kiosks as opposed to more library content [online]. We don't want to get too deep into the business models now, but I think we look at it a little differently in places where we can go with it as opposed to where Netflix might [go with it]. So I wouldn't say we're looking to do stuff that's five years old whereas Netflix is looking to do all new stuff."

And original content?

"It's a little too early--we're not talking specifically about what the product is," Smith says. "But we can say is that it will be very compelling and competitive to other offerings."

Very compelling indeed.

Related story: Netflix's Head Of Content Sarandos Queues Up An Original Programming Strategy

[Image: Flickr user english invader]

Believe it or not, the founder of Reddit also has to avoid spending all day killing time on Reddit. Here's his advice for staying productive.

Reddit is arguably the most successful social news site on the Internet. So how does cofounder and New York tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian avoid "Redditing" all day at the expense of getting things done? From the virtual personal assistant Fancy Hands to an analytics tool called Rescue Time, Ohanian gave me a peek into his hour-by-hour routine--and offered some video game-inspired advice about leading a balanced life. 

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Work Flow is a video and blog series featuring day-to-day "how I work" secrets from successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. It highlights the tools they use and the principles they follow for creativity and productivity. Upcoming guests include Digg's Kevin Rose, CNN's Ali Velshi, and social media pioneer danah boyd. 

Amber Mac is a best-selling author, TV host, speaker, and entrepreneur. She started her career as a web strategist at Razorfish-San Francisco and has spent years working as a tech broadcaster alongside TWiT.tv's Leo Laporte. She is also the cofounder of digital agency MGImedia, a well-known blogger, and the author of Power Friending: Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business.

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[Image: Flickr user Alec Perkins]