We meet again. Or perhaps you've stumbled in here for the first time, in which case welcome welcome, and a happy Friday to all.
Along with billions of others(including Esha apparently), I’ve been watching the World Cup and while I don’t have any strong personal feelings invested with the changes that have been made, the hydration breaks have definitely exposed me to more ads than I’ve seen in a bit. Batteries, tequila, credit cards, soda, all of life’s essentials. This isn’t something unique to the World Cup, and I surely am not immune to the power of persuasion, but companies spend billions on these ad campaigns which makes me wonder why these ads are so effective on us.
To be clear, I’m not confused about advertising in general. I get it when people stay in their lanes. Messi says he like these cleats, Ohtani says he only uses this baseball bat, Kunal says he likes that brand of Chai. These all make sense to me. Get some subject matter expert saying this is their favorite thing and giving you the confidence that you’re making a good purchase. Or at least getting paid to say it’s their favorite, but same result. Either way, I get it.
But why in good gravy do we care when someone who has no expertise on a thing says they like it? Why should anyone care if some athlete really likes a specific brand of batteries? Show me the scientist or engineer who has spent 40 years researching high density energy polymers or whatever and tell me what brand he thinks is the best battery. That guy will make me feel good about whatever battery purchase, not the dude who kicks a ball every waking moment of his life.
Going one step further, why do we let people who are good in one area have any sway over us in completely unrelated things anywhere in life? He’s a good businessman, or she’s a good doctor so we should immediately respect their opinion on hamburgers? One of them is a vegan!
I think we like to try to bucket this phenomenon as “charisma” so that we can hand wave away the fact that it makes no sense. We can't be perfect in our avoiding these little mental traps, but I believe people often have more reasoning power than they give themselves the opportunity to prove. The ability to step back for a second and ask "why" when confronted with a choice even if it takes a bit of effort.
But also you have a gigantic wildfire started because some dudes in the back of a pickup truck were shooting fireworks into a hillside of dry tall grass on a windy night, so what do I know? Maybe some people are better off letting Messi tell them which battery to buy so they don't blow their hand off trying to power a flash light with a grenade.
