Pi-Consulting

Some time ago, by order of the hip-hop community’s high arbiters of sartorial taste, it was decreed that Thou Shalt Wear Thy Jeans At Half-Mast. Sagging pants, revealing at least eight inches of the boxer shorts worn underneath, became an almost mandatory fashion statement among young male African Americans with attitude. (Not all of them knew where the idea came from: it started in jail, where oversized prison uniforms were issued without belts, to prevent suicide. After the cons stopped laughing, low-slung pants became a wordless invitation to the ‘screws’ to “kiss this”). Now states like Louisiana are invoking indecency laws and trying to criminalize the habit. Wearing your trousers below the Plimsoll Line can cost you a $500 fine in some towns, even get you thrown into jail, where of course the fashion originated. The NAACP takes a dim view. “To criminalize how a person wears their clothing is more offensive than what it is trying to remedy”, says a former executive director there. Source: New York Times, Pi.

You can’t take it with you. Official. And to prove it, look no further than the latest masterwork of British artist Damien Hirst, who has sold a life-sized bejeweled sculpted death’s head to an investor group for a death-defying $100 million US. The man who gave the world the pickled shark and the sheep-sawn-in-half in formaldehyde has excelled himself yet again, lovingly crafting a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds.

Selling this bizarre object to a “consortium of collectors” (friends of his, perhaps? Hirst himself reportedly has still “retained a position in the piece”), he has consolidated his claim to the title of World’s Best-Selling Living Artist. Poignantly, the new work is titled “For The Love Of God”, probably foreshadowing the typical reaction from members of the general public when they find out what the great man hath wrought. (more…)

GREAT FALLS, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–eBrain Market Research and Pi Market Research Inc. today announced the launch of a new Consumer Insight market research platform for the Consumer Electronics industry: the Pi-Chart(TM).

The innovative new joint offering goes beyond demographic, segmentation and perceptual mapping techniques to show consumer attitude patterns in an innovative graphic format. Deeper understanding of the values, attitudes and mindsets of key consumer groups offer CE manufacturers new ways of tuning and targeting their communications, thus boosting sales and optimizing Return on Marketing Investment.

The Pi Initiative (more…)