The Napkin Sketch

How Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and others are using the power of images to digest complex ideas.

Fast Company, March 20, 2009 — You ought to be in pictures. No, really. Companies are increasingly using simple pictures to distill complicated concepts into easily shared, easily remembered nuggets. "Graphic expression and visual thinking are a central part of human cognition," says Neil Cohn, a researcher in cognitive psychology and linguistics at Tufts University. These ideas are spreading from how companies sell what they do — as in UPS's "Whiteboard" ad campaign, featuring its agency's creative director sketching out what brown can do for you — to plotting strategy. For example, Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook is based on the "social graph," a visual model of how people interact.

Google, Campbell Soup, J&J Tops in CSR

Marketing Charts, November 10, 2008 — Google, Campbell Soup, and Johnson & Johnson top the list of American companies that the US public sees as most socially responsible, according to the 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Index (CSRI), from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Reputation Institute.