How do you turn a miserable experience like waiting in an airport into something consumers actually look forward to? This is how. That’s right: Fun sells.

The Red Sox season may be all but officially over (save the complaints, Sox fans; we’re just talking reality here), but that doesn’t make LL Bean’s sponsorship of Fenway Park’s infield tarp any less of a great move. The quality of some of Bean’s product has dropped off a bit in recent years (a situation they’re going to need to address), but they’re still trading on a very strong brand that’s all about traditional New England values. There’s probably nothing that can reinforce that connection as well as an association with the Sox. And, hell, even with the team sinking in the standings, Fenway keeps filling up. That means you still end up putting your logo in front of 38,000 people (and a whole lot more than that when the TV cameras follow the grounds crew) any time it rains. The only question we have is this: If the tarp tears, fades or wears out, will Bean replace it free?

There isn’t a ton more than needs to be said about John Krafcik, CEO of Hundai Motor America, than you’ll red in this USA Today feature. That said, you really need to read the piece. This guy is the kind of business leader America needs.

It’s still way too early in Rex Ryan’s career as an NFL head coach to know if Ryan will outdo his father. Buddy Ryan, you might remember, was an outstanding defensive coordinator who never managed to get it done as top dog. But just as we know Rex has his father’s talent for coaching defensive units, we’ve also learned without question that Rex inherited Buddy’s flair for the dramatic. Buddy called Refrigerator Perry a waste of a draft pick, told fans in Arizona “You’ve got a winner in town” (before leading the Cardinals to a 12-20 record over two seasons), and famously punched his own team’s offensive coordinator, Kevin Gilbride, during a televised sideline argument. Rex told reporters he wasn’t going to “kiss [Patriots coach Bill Belichick's] rings” in his first season with the New York Jets. And before his second has even begun, he’s declared the Jets the odds-on favorite to win Super Bowl XLV (Las Vegas disagrees), and lit turned more than a few heads with a salty performance on HBO’s Hard Knocks. The NFL may not officially condone Ryan’s penchant for working blue in the film room. But you’ve gotta imagine the league loves the attention his antics net. He may not have proved anything as a coach yet, but Rex Ryan’s definitely proved his abilities as an entertainer.

As a band, the Grateful Dead have been gone just a hair (a long and unkempt one) over 15 years, having bowed out with Jerry Garcia’s passing on August 9, 1995. As a brand, the Dead are still going strong. That’s fairly astounding, considering the act had exactly one hit single in its 30 years together. (And “Touch of Grey,” which went to #9 on the Billboard singles chart in 1987, is a song you couldn’t pay most Deadheads to listen to.) The Dead weren’t Elvis or the Beatles. They were something entirely different, something the record industry never understood – but the concert industry did. They paved the way for an entire genre of jam oriented rockers, who are still out there playing night after night to huge live audiences – and selling very few records- to this day.

How did the Dead pull it off? Mostly, by breaking every rule that the record business had imposed on rock and roll. They were maybe the only real rebels in a genre built on rebellion. But they didn’t do for the sake of going against the grain. The Dead did what they did because they knew it would work. They succeeded artistically, enabling themselves to make music their way for three decades, and economically, piling up fortunes for all of the band’s members.

So, yeah, what we’re saying is that you can learn a lot about how to build and maintain a successful brand from the Grateful Dead. Which is what makes David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan’s Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History a worthwhile read for anyone interested in brand strategy. Go order a copy. Here’s something to listen to while you do.

OK, there’s no question about it. Lawns are a nuisance. They’re bad for the environment. They’re bad for your family, your dog, and your back. But, uh, here’s the thing: As some of us know, they can be good for the suburban homeowner’s soul (or OK, half of suburban homeowners’ souls; and, not to be sexist, but usually it’s the male half). So before we let go of our lawns, let’s all take a few minutes to figure out what lawnless fella is supposed to do to avoid spending every summer Saturday looking at color samples for the living room (didn’t we just paint that like 10 years ago?). Think about it, while you watch Darby explain the lingering appeal of the lawn.

Here’s the between-the-lines truth in to The New York Times‘ report on Unilever’s Mad Men-specific TV spots: This is the kind of thinking it’s going to take to get your TV advertising seen by the better part of viewers. In an age when everything is watched on DVR, you’ve got to get people to take their finger off the fast-forward button long enough to take in your message. Making spots that look like the show they’re airing on is one way to do it. It’s an effective way at that. But it’s a more expensive approach than a lot of businesses can afford.

The more budget-conscious approach is to do spots that are creative and fun, spots people are going to slow down for because they look interesting – or, more likely, because they’ve heard others talking about them.

It’s worth noting here that budget conscious isn’t a way of saying “cheap.” It means at a level businesses that don’t have Unilever’s resources can manage. You don’t have to spend millions, but you’re not going to get spots that work if you have your local cable station produce them “free” (with your non-targeted purchase of ROS inventory they can’t fill otherwise). Just because you don’t have Unilever’s budget, that doesn’t mean you can’t adopt the best parts of their strategy.

That includes what Unilever’s North American media director Rob Master described to the Times as “reverse upfront,” a process that puts the emphasis on creatives.

The Times offers this quote from Master: “Money follows ideas.”

That’s how you win in advertising. Creative sells. Good ads don’t cost you money, they make you money.

And, yes, going with spots that rock the boat a bit requires a good bit of confidence. But that’s OK, because consumers can spot confidence a mile away, and they respond to it.

Let’s everyone grab a bag and raise a Doodle in memory of Morrie Yohai, thanks to whom all of our fingers will always be a little bit orange. Rest in peace, Mr. Yohai, and may the name of your snack be a blessing.

So here you go. Old Spice launches a YouTube campaign, sees a 107 percent sales hike in a month and gets lots of credit for making great use of new media.

All true. All of the praise is merited. But there’s are other points to be made, including this fairly simple one: whether you’re working in new media, old media or (in the case of Old Spice, which established this campaign on TV before moving to the web) a combination, fun sells.

Smart sells, too. Old Spice’s sell message in the TV campaign and web videos alike is over-the-top, a poke at an industry (cosmetics) that promises a whole lot of things it knows, and consumers know, it can never deliver. These videos send the message, “We know you know we’re full of it. And we know you know we know you know we’re full of it. So let’s all of own it and enjoy ourselves.” It worked for the reason that winking at your audience almost always works. Consumers respond when you respect their intelligence, and particularly when you do it in a way that invites them to join the fun.

Watch that video. Actually, first just look at those guys. They don’t look healthy, right?

But now contrast this Boston Globe feature on the South Boston chair club with this USA Today column on what we increasingly allow ourselves to believe equals friendship in the age of Facebook and Twitter and you start to get a different notion about what healthy means.

This isn’t to put down social media, which, like everything else can be great if you use it right. It’s just to say that no matter how much more efficiently social media keep us connected to huge groups of people, there’s a richness to actual regular human interaction that can’t be duplicated on a web site. Duh, right? Except not duh. Because there’s a real risk that we’re losing our ability to relate to each other as human beings. And a lot of kids aren’t learning to relate to each other in real ways to begin with.

So what’s to be done? Do you have to wait until you retire, get a chair and hang out on the beach or the street corner every day, talking about nothing? No. But it might not hurt to grab a chair and hang out talking about nothing more than you do it now. Or, as Mark Vernon puts it in that USAT piece, “Put down the device; engage the person.” Try it. You’ll rediscover what those guys in Southie never forgot: It’s unpredictable (even when it’s predictable); it’s human; and, yeah, it’s healthy.