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Mavericks: Where surfing and suicide meet.
Until 10:05 a.m. on July 5th, I considered myself a good and independent thinker. I always had tested well and earned honors from a challenging college. In the years that followed school, I became so intigued by the subject of thinking that while writing my most recent book, Unthinking, I also created a two-semester college class called Thinking, a sequence designed to enhance students' critical thinking skills.
I thought that I thought well.
Then came that July morning. On the previous Saturday, I had walked into my neighborhood Barnes & Noble and was drawn to a sign on a table: The New York Times Notable Books of the Year! I scanned the table and a blue-hued paperback grabbed my eye. It was titled The Wave and featured a massive crashing wave on its cover. The book's subject--freakishly and rogue waves--intrigued me because I grew up on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and surfed in my Beach Boys-influenced youth. (California Girls led me to apply to California's Stanford University--and nowhere else.)
The back cover attracted me, too. The female author shown in the photo looked like a wahine: Tan, blonde, nice cheekbones--fairly bitchen. So I opened Gidget's book and scanned the reviews inside.
Those reviews ranged from enthusiastic to rhapsodic. Her book sounded Hemingwayesque: The Young Woman and The Sea.
Her topic and reviews coaxed me to buy her book. And just before 10 a.m. on July 5, I decided to Tweet my own almost-breathless review. But I couldn't recall Gidget's real name, so I ventured on to Amazon to get it.
I found her name, Susan Casey, but then an unexpected item below her name caught my attention: Four stars of a possible five. I felt surprised; that seemed a low score for an award-winning book. I needed to know:
Why did so many of Amazon's 176 reviewers not love this book?
To answer my question, I read several two- and three-star reviews. The consensus was that Casey had written a 300-page personals ad to Laird Hamilton and the several other courageous men/suicidal nincompoops who travel the world trying to ride seven-story high waves. Many reviewers criticized the author's attempt to weave science into her mash note; one sliced and diced her many apparent errors. (His authorititative critique convinced me that Fluid Dynamics is not a subject I could have passed, but the book comforted me: I learned that freak waves bewilder scientists, too.
So I never wrote that Tweet recommending Gidget's book. I had decided my initial reaction had been wrong.
I now see that two forces had been pushing me, in opposite directions. The enthusiastic recognition from The New York Times and other respected publications had told me to expect a wonderful book, and so I experienced one. Now, the Amazon reviewers had coaxed me to change my mind about that experience.
I had loved Casey's book, and now I didn't.
And so now I wonder: What do my opinions really mean? Do I truly have my own? And does this experience suggest that we experience things not as they are, but as we believe them to be? And that our perceptions are so susceptible to influence, including from advertising, that reality is mostly in our heads?
This is advertising's power over us. Its messages don't just influence our decisions to buy. These messages alter our perceptions and experiences, They do this to such a degree, in fact, that advertising cannot be separated from our experiences. It is integral to them.
What do you--and your clients or customers--know? What do any of us actually know? We know mostly what we feel, actually, which is influenced by forces all around us--good and bad reviews, good ads and no ads, intrusive emails, thoughtful and thoughtless sales people. We look for clues everywhere before we decide that something might be wonderful.
This helps answer an important question that we all face: How can we make others think that we, or the services or products that we offer, are wonderful?
What is the answer?
Send wonderful clues.
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