Michael Douglas, the actor, appears in a public service announcement for the FBI warning of the dangers of insider trading. Douglas makes reference to his famous movie role, Gordon Gekko, from the 1987 hit, Wall Street. You’ll recall that Douglas as Gekko intoned that infamous mantra of the go-go 1980s, “Greed is good.” The FBI hopes the PSA with Douglas will inspire current Wall Street denizens to report illegal trading.

The video, shot last November in the Trump Hotel in Manhattan, is also an effort to raise the F.B.I.’s public profile. Or, as David A. Chaves, a supervisor and special agent, said on Monday, “It’s important for us to have the F.B.I. brand out on Wall Street.”

See, the FBI does a fair amount of investigation into financial crimes, but does not receive much awareness for its activities, taking a backseat to more well known Federal agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. So, the Douglas ad does double duty: First, it solicits tipsters and second, it builds the FBI brand.

I grew up watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. in the 1960s hit TV series, the FBI.

The show enjoyed the cooperation of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and displayed a kind of fictional verité where the good guys always won without being boring. It was great PR and demonstrated just why Mr. Hoover was such a dangerous guy.

Now. Will this media ploy with Michael Douglas provide similar magic for the FBI? Consider this observation from Douglas.

In the wake of the popularity of the first “Wall Street,” Mr. Douglas would receive high-fives and handshakes from real-life traders and bankers when he walked the streets of Manhattan. The Wall Streeters loved Mr. Gekko, who declares in the film that “greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” But the outpouring of love for such a character befuddled Mr. Douglas, who won a best-actor Academy Award for his role in the first Wall Street film. Mr. Douglas wondered why he was being thanked, according to Mr. Chaves, who quoted him as saying: “I’m a criminal in the movie. Don’t they realize that?”

Michael Douglas is popular, famous, likeable, and credible as both a person and an actor. Yet, the FBI may have the wrong man for the Cue. Many Wall Street workers would still find nothing wrong in what Gordon Gekko did other than let himself get caught in an embarrassing situation. Gekko hung himself on a wiretap hidden on a formerly trusted associate. If Gekko had controlled his anger at that associate (Bud, played by Charlie Sheen, remember?), he would have faced no legal problem he couldn’t solve. The lesson of Gekko for many is this: Be careful who you trust.

Hollywood stars are powerful persuasion Cues and earn millions of dollars as endorsers or speakers or models. They attract Reception and Exposure in the first stage of the Cascade and can Cue the desired TACT to hit the ultimate downstream behavior. But, they are not automatic persuasion plays. The FBI might actually make it harder to catch financial criminals and buff their brand with this PSA.

P.S. Take a YouTube blast from the past with Gekko and greed!

WSJ offers a nice Point-Counterpoint piece on the value of social media for small business. I’m not sure if the writers were specifically chosen to make a persuasion point, but they did. Start with the Con position.

My own success with social media makes me think twice of whether it is all worth the time. If I sold t-shirts, margaritas or dance lessons I would absolutely bring my buzz to the beat of tweets; however, I sell research and recruiting efforts and I am not sold that my audience is actively listening via tweets, likes or shares.

This from Karen Russo, a scientific consultant.

Now the Pro side of things.

We produce fashionable bracelets ($25 – $45) that are made in America and can help you survive whatever life throws at you. We spent countless evenings spreading the word about our mission and our products through several social media channels, primarily Facebook. It was a great way to get the company out in front of thousands of people, and it cost us nothing but our time!

Kurt Walchle runs Survival Straps and apparently survives on social media.

Clearly both writers are pointing to the same use of social media, small consumer goods. Walchle asserts he’s making money primarily through social media and thus demonstrates how it can be done. Russo sees the same application and asserts that it cannot be done for her.

The persuasion point of the debate aims at the Local and the Box and Play. Social media are not a Universal, Eternal, and Boundless new persuasion, but rather a feature of the here-and-now where you find your Other Guys hanging out. It’s an element in that mess of life that stimulates different kinds of persuasion Boxes and Plays you can make to get the Change.

Or.

An old Billy Crystal joke goes . . . so you ask a married woman how often she has sex and she says, “All the time, at least 3 times a week.” Then you ask her husband and he says, “Hardly ever, maybe 3 times a week.”

Bah-dum-bump.

Got a million of ‘em.

Be here all week.

Persuasion science evolves!

A startup called SonicNotify embeds inaudibly high-pitched audio signals within music or any other audio track. When a compatible app hears that signal, it triggers any available smartphone function to link you to websites, display text, bring up map locations, display a photo, let you vote on which song a performer plays next and so on.

This technology is proposed as a concert trick. If you have this app on your iGizmo while attending a concert, the performer can trigger it with an inaudible cue that then delivers tons of content to your device. Consider this fun application.

Location is also a part of this, because each speaker in a venue can transmit a different tone, opening up new possibilities for live concert participation along the lines of what we saw with inConcertApp. “We can also target sections through radius with frequencies, so we can have Section C’s phones turn into purple hearts, while Section F on the other side of the arena has red squares,” added Israel.

Way back in the day, remember when you’d fire up your Zippo lighter and hold it up during a power ballad? And those card tricks at stadium games where people find a square under their seats, hold it up on cue, and spell out BEAT PITT! Well, now you can do that with your iGizmo.

Mavens. Tell me you see how this technology works with both the Cascade and persuasion. It’s another kind of electronic dog collar only when you sense the iGizmo you chirp at it inaudibly and make the iGizmo send a message to the Other Guy. You can mix ‘n match like dressing up Barbie! Think of the possibilities mavens!

Can’t wait for the Hollywood movie where the hidden Bad Guy surreptiously gets this app on his phone then the Good Guy accidently triggers the chirp. Surprise for everyone!

Hey, include sounds in your branding. Include these inaudible chirps within your sonic logo.

And people wonder why I don’t have a smartphone.

P.S. Thanks for a valued network that pointed this out to me!

China has a serious air pollution problem as it makes the PostModern Great Leap from Agricultural to Industrial and Information society. China wants to live in the 21st century and that means mining, power, construction, and motors, big motors all of which produce enormous amounts of particles that can have deadly effects when concentrated in the air for long periods of time. Add in the huge population of many Chinese cities and you’ve got a major public health problem.

Of course, the Chinese government is working on it. When I was at NIOSH 1998-2002, we regularly had exchanges with Chinese scientists, administrators, and manufacturers about these problems. We had American personnel in China providing advice and experience on working projects. Such collaborations continue today.

I’d argue that given the scope and speed of change in China, the country is doing better at controlling air pollution than say America in the 1890s, maybe even America in the 1950s. Thus, compared to contemporary Western society, China has a major air pollution problem. Compared to Western societies during their transitions from farm to factory, China may be doing better. Relative comparisons, however, are less important than the large, serious, and immediate risk.

And, how does the New York Times choose to exemplify that risk? Meet baby Zhang Hao.

He’s got rhinitis, a runny nose. Which, as the photo caption notes “may be caused” by air pollution. Later we learn just how seriously the Chinese population is taking the air pollution problem.

Such sentiments are increasingly common on weibos, the Chinese version of microblogs like Twitter, especially among elites. International schools here are doming their athletic fields because pollution so often requires that students stay indoors.

Gee. Microbloggers! Domed athletic fields. All, Elite!

And the NYT narrates the role of social media in the hands of plucky advocates. One bought their own air monitor and published their results daily on the Internet. This led activists in other cities to do the same. What happened?

But faced with an Internet-led brushfire of criticism, the edifice of environmental propaganda is collapsing. The government recently reversed course and began to track the most pernicious measure of urban air pollution — particulates 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less, or PM 2.5. It decreed that about 30 major cities must begin monitoring the particulates this year, followed by about 80 more next year.

There is a source of environmental propaganda in this story and it ain’t the Chinese government. It’s the NYT writer who thinks the story is important because he’s got a picture of a baby with a runny nose, elite microbloggers, activists using monitors that require more training than they’ve got, and all those rich kids in domed athletics stadia.

The big PR moment on the Oscar’s Red Carpet last night was surely Sacha Baron Cohen’s Dictator accident with Ryan Seacrest.

One of the few surprises came before the ceremony began, when Sacha Baron Cohen approached the E! host Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet. The comedian was in character from his new movie, “The Dictator,” and carried an urn filled with what he described as the ashes of Kim Jong-il, the deceased leader of North Korea. The comedian spilled the ashes all over a shocked Mr. Seacrest, saying, as he was hustled off by security guards, “When someone asks you what you are wearing, you will say Kim Jong-il.” Mr. Seacrest was not amused.

Sure. Seacrest was shocked, SHOCKED (YouTube)!