All Marketers...
Hijacking a story
As we saw in the Easter Bunny example, new ideas can travel with old stories.
Congress succeeded brilliantly with the Easter Bunny technique just this week. By calling Mark McGwire and other baseball players to testify about steroid use (and doing it during spring training), they instantly escalated the profile of the issue of drug abuse by teen athletes.
Now, whenever someone talks about McGwire, they will automatically be talking about steroid use. The two stories get intertwined and are more likely to get noticed.
Yes, smart Congressmen are marketers too (you already knew they were liars).