Question
What are some great examples of successfully putting lipstick on a pig?
Answer
To get the ball rolling.
- Nathan Myrhvold's Intellectual Ventures was initially pitched as this amazing high-powered brain trust of brilliant people generating great ideas. Savvy/cynical people seem to have unanimously concluded that this is just high-end patent trolling, but the general PR seems to have worked on casual observers who don't know much about IP.
- Many large defense projects. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has been successfully pitched to Congress and the general public (last Die Hard movie for instance) as this great airplane but is widely acknowledged to be a complete pig by air combat experts.
- Free agency is successfully sold as a "be your own boss" model of autonomy in many sectors where it has no redeeming value to the worker, but allows employers to get away with paying less than minimum wage on average, and no benefits. Especially true of many domains where creative work is gamified into competition and lottery-type "prizes" awarded in lieu of direct compensation.