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A/B testing for the homeless

To prove a point about the utility of A/B testing, a marketing blogger helped a homeless man modify his begging approach and increased his earnings by over 100%.

What we did here was quite different than what most homeless people would do. We focused on a different angle. We already have the “I’m homeless, help me” stigma attached to people that are sitting on the side of the street with a cup, so we don’t necessary need to make that a prominent part of our banner. The next big difference is that we changed colors and went from cardboard to white to spark the interest of people walking by instead of automatically having negative associations that they have with cardboard and homeless people.

Writer Gay Talese did something similar last year. (via the browser)