It was close to midnight and it was unusual to see vehicles on the road. However, several trucks pulled over and workers silently unloaded camera equipment and cardboard boxes, and then carried them inside the Morgenson family home.

    What took place over the next eight weeks was inspired by a Hollywood movie called The Joneses about a family of marketers who move into a local neighborhood to sell their products secretly to their neighbors. The idea was to test the power of word-of-mouth marketing. By filming a 'rear' family in unscripted (无剧本的) situations, my team and I would document how the Morgensons' circle of friends responded to brands and products the Morgensons bought into their lives.

    With the help of 35 video cameras and 25 microphones hidden inside the furniture, the operation done secretly showed something shocking. The most powerful hidden persuader of all isn't in your TV or on the shelves of your supermarket. It's a far more important influence that's around you almost every waking moment: your very own friends and neighbors. There is nothing quite so persuasive as observing someone we respect or admire using a brand or product.

    Our analysis also found that the brands the Morgensons used went faster. About one third of the Morgensons' friends began promoting these same brands to their friends. We also found that the brands their friends were most likely to buy at the Morgensons' suggestion were the bigger and better-known ones. This proved my thoughts that traditional marketing and secret marketing work well together. The most persuasive advertising strategies are strengthened by word-of-mouth advertising.

    Whenever I meet with company managers, I tell them that the people who hold the real marketing power are mouse-clicking consumers and their wide circles of real-life friends. In other words, the people who hold the real power are us.

    What's On?

Electric Underground

    7:00pm－1:00am   Free at the Cyclops Theatre

    Do you know who's playing in your area? We're bringing you an exciting evening of live rock and pop music from the best local bands. Are you interested in becoming a musician and getting a recording contract (合同)? If so, come early to the talk at 7.30pm by Jules Skye, a successful record producer. He's going to talk about how you can find the right person to produce your music.

Gee Whizz

    8:30pm-10:30pm   Comedy at Kaleidoscope

    Come and see Gee Whizz perform. He's the funniest stand-up comedian on the comedy scene. This joyful show will please everyone, from the youngest to the oldest. Gee Whizz really knows how to make you laugh! Our bar is open from 7.00pm for drinks and snacks (快餐).

Simon's Workshop

    5:00 p m-7:30 pm   Wednesdays at Victoria Stage

    This is a good chance for anyone who wants to learn how to do comedy. The workshop looks at every kind of comedy, and practices many different ways of making people laugh. Simon is a comedian and actor who has 10 years' experience of teaching comedy. His workshops are exciting and fun. An evening with Simon will give you the confidence to be funny.

Charlotte Stone

    8:00pm-11:00pm   Pizza World

    Fine food with beautiful jazz music; this is a great evening out. Charlotte Stone will perform songs from her new best-selling CD, with James Pickering on the piano. The menu is Italian, with excellent meat and fresh fish, pizzas and pasta (面食). Book early to get a table. Our bar is open all day, and serves cocktails, coffee, beer, and white wine.

    Two things changed my life:  my mother and a white plastic bike basket. I have thought long and hard about it and it's true. I would be a different person if my mom hadn't turned a silly bicycle accessory into a life lesson I carry with me today.

    My mother and father were united in their way of raising children, but it mostly fell to my mother to actually carry it out. Looking back, I honestly don't know how she did it. Managing the family budget must have been a very hard task, but she made it look effortless. If we complained about not having what another kid did, we'd hear something like, “I don't care what so –and –so got for his birthday, you are not getting a TV in your room a car for your birthday a lsvish sweet 16 party.” We had to earn our allowance by doing chores around the house. I can still remember how long it took to polish the legs of our coffee table. My brothers can no doubt remember hours spent cleaning the house .Like the two little girls growing up at the White House, we made our own beds (no one left the house until that was done)and picked up after ourselves. We had to keep track of our belongings, and if something was lost, it was not replaced.

It was summer and ,one day ,my mother drove me to the bike shop to get a tire fixed—and there it was in the window, White, shiny, plastic and decorated with flowers ,the basket winked at me and I knew —-I knew—I had to have it.

    “It's beautiful,” my mother said when I pointed it out to her,” What a neat basket.”

    I tried to hold off at first, I played it cool for a short while. But then I guess I couldn't at and it any longer: “Mom, please can I please, please get it? I'll do extra chores for as long as you say, I'll do anything, but I need that basket, I love that basket. Please, Mom. Please?”

    I was desperate.

    “You know,” she said, gently rubbing my back while we both stared at what I believes was the coolest thing ever,” If you save up you could buy this yourself.”

“By the time I make enough it'll be gone!”

    “Maybe Roger here could hold it for you,” she smiled at Roger, the bike guy.

    “He can't hold it for that long, Mom .Someone else will buy it .Please, Mom, Please?”

    “There might be another way,” she said.

    And so our paying plan unfolded. My mother bought the beautiful basket and put it safely in some hiding place I couldn't find. Each week I eagerly counted my growing saving increased by extra work here and there (washing the car ,helping my mother make dinner, delivering or collecting things on my bike that already looked naked without the basket in front).And then ,weeks later ,I counted ,re-counted and jumped for joy. Oh, happy day! I made it! I finally had the exact amount we'd agreed upon….

    Days later the unthinkable happened. A neighborhood girl I'd played with millions of times appeared with the exact same basket fixed to her shiny, new bike that already had all the bells and whistles. I rode hard and fast home to tell my mother about this disaster. This horrible turn of events.

    And then came the lesson. I've taken with me through my life:” Honey, Your basket is extra-special,” Mom said, gently wiping away my hot tears.” Your basket is special because you paid for it yourself.”

    Bad news sells. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news. Those are the classic rules for the evening broadcasts and the morning papers. But now that information is being spread and monitored in different ways, researchers are discovering new rules. By tracking people's e-mails and online posts, scientists have found that good news can spread faster and farther than disasters and sob stories.

    "The 'if it bleeds' rule works for mass media," says Jonah Berger, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. They want your eyeballs and don't care how you're feeling. But when you share a story with your friends, you care a lot more how they react. You don't want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer."

    Researchers analyzing word-of-mouth communication—e-mails, Web posts and reviews, face-to-face conversations—found that it tended to be more positive than negative, but that didn't necessarily mean people preferred positive news. Was positive news shared more often simply because people experienced more good things than bad things? To test for that possibility, Dr. Berger looked at how people spread a particular set of news stories: thousands of articles on The New York Times' website. He and a Penn colleague analyzed the "most e-mailed" list for six months. One of his first findings was that articles in the science section were much more likely to make the list than non-science articles. He found that science amazed tines' readers and made them want to share this positive feeling with others.

    Readers also tended to share articles that were exciting or funny, or that inspired negative feelings like anger or anxiety, but not articles that left them merely sad. They needed to be aroused one way or the other, and they preferred good news to bad. The more positive an article, the more likely it was to be shared, as Dr. Berger explains in his new book, "Contagious: Why Things Catch on."

    If you think can-do, and you're creative and persistent, it's amazing what you can accomplish. During college, I remember being told that to fulfill my language requirement, I would "have to" take a class that I had no interest in and was meaningless to me. Instead of taking this class, however, I decided to create my own. So I put together a list of books I would read and the assignments I would do and found a teacher to sponsor me. I then went to the dean of the school and presented my case. He bought into my idea and I completed my language requirement by taking my self-built course.

    American aviator Elinor Smith once said, "It has long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

    It's so true. To reach your goals in life, you must seize the initiative. If you're feeling bad about not being asked out on dates, don't just sit around and sulk, do something about it. Find ways to meet people. Be friendly and try smiling a lot. Ask them out. They may not know how great you are.

    Don't wait for that perfect job to fall in your lap, go after it. Send out your resume, network, volunteer to work for free.

    If you're at a store and need assistance, don't wait for the salesperson to find you, you find them.

    Some people mistake can-do for being pushy, aggressive, or obnoxious. Wrong. Can-do is courageous, persistent, and smart. Others think can-do people stretch the rules and make their own laws. Not so. Can-do thinkers are creative, enterprising, and extremely resourceful.

    George Bernard Shaw, the English playwright, knew all about can-do. Listen to how he said it: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them."

    In 1963, at age 65, my grandfather, Erwin, decided to build a new house. He wasn't quite sure what to do with the old house since it sat where the new house would be. He finally hired a powerful vehicle to push it far out into a small group of trees. That old house sits there to this very day.

    Erwin and his wife, Elida, passed away, and I purchased the farm from their estate. My wife and I raised our sons on this place and have lived here for more than 30 years. When we first moved in, my wife took one look at the deserted house and declared it a hidden danger. I agreed and planned on a large bonfire. But I thought it appropriate to check out the house first, just in case something of worth had been left behind.

    I walked through the tall grass in the meadow where the old house sat. Time had worn it out. The entrance floor had fallen down on itself and most of the windows were gone. We entered through an open window. ①Here lay the reminders of my grandparents' lives: a broken chair, some old clothes ... But the thing that drew my eye was a cardboard box stuffed with papers. I dug through its contents and was instantly transported back in time. There was a tax return from 1957. Greeting cards from old friends and relatives, now all dead and gone. An uncle's third-grade spelling book. So sweet were the memories that the old house was spared the torch.

    As we hurried through our lives, my visits grew infrequent. I might catch a glimpse of the house through the trees and remembered how, as a child, I would struggle to walk in my father's footprints. Even then, I could imagine no nobler calling than farming, just like Dad. Then, one April morning, my father was felled by a massive heart attack, at age 68. The entire family was shocked by his passing, none more than me. Why I visited that old house on a day shortly after my father's funeral is still beyond me. It was as though it were calling; even the trees seemed to whisper an invitation to come, to visit, to stay awhile.

    ②As I stood once again on that ancient floor, my eye was drawn to a pile of papers on the floor. An envelope, yellowed with age, lay on top. A blue stamp on the envelope read "Passed by Naval Censor" How could I have missed this treasure? My father had served aboard the USS Washington during World War II and had written home whenever he could. My grandmother saved all of his letters.

    I removed one letter carefully from its envelope. ③It was dated September 1944. My father would have been somewhere in the South Pacific at that time and all of 18 years old. T studied the familiar handwriting. Dad wondered how the com harvest had been. He supposed that his youngest brother was starting first grade and imagined that he was becoming quite the little man. He asked his mother to greet everyone and said that he missed them all.

    It wasn't hard to read between the lines. Here was a homesick young man, a kid really, who had spent his entire life living upon a sea of flat land grass. Now he was on a different kind of sea, an ocean that was being disturbed by the thunder and the lightning of a world at war. At the bottom of the page, my father had passed on one last message. ④Tears burned my eyes as I read those words he had so carefully emphasized: "All is well here. Please don't worry. I am doing fine."

    As I left the old house that day, I took one last glance back at it over my shoulder. I don't care what any one thinks, I decided. That old house gets to stay there until it rots into the earth.