Dustings #58
/I once had an idea for a dating site where you would upload the least flattering pictures of yourself. Maybe there would be some sort of vetting by people who worked on the site to make sure these are truly bad pictures of you. Otherwise the site would operate like a normal dating site. Except when you get to the point where you finally meet your match in person and you think, “Oh, wow! What a pleasant surprise!”
I’ve always done my best to set low expectations with people. If you tell people you’re a great worker, or a great cook, or a great lover, or whatever—that might get your foot in the door (or penis in the vagina)—but then you have to put your actual abilities up against the power of their imagination. And that’s a battle you can almost never win.
This phenomenon plays out in magic ads as well.
Take this trick, SOLID. I watched the video and at first I thought, “A borrowed, signed key penetrates into a can or bottle? That sounds amazing.” Immediately my mind was churning over the possibilities.
Then I watched a little more and did a little reading and realized the key isn’t borrowed. It’s your own key. And it’s a key that easily fits into the can. And you start the effect by just openly putting the key in the can and then “removing” it. Does this make it a bad trick? Not necessarily. But it just makes it not the trick I originally was hoping for.
Now, had the ad copy started, “You pull out your keyring and remove a small key,” they probably would have sold a copy to me. No, I wouldn’t have been initially as interested as I was when I thought it was a regular-sized borrowed key, but at least my interest wouldn’t have waned the more I learned about the trick. I would have been focused on the positives of the trick rather than where it didn’t live up to my expectations.
Is this good marketing advice? No, probably not. But I’m mentioning it now because if and when I start releasing products in the future, I’m going to use this approach. I’m going to establish the limitations and the weak spots first and then express what makes the trick worth it despite those factors.
Love to see such a genuine excited reaction to a magic performance…
This trick teaches the very important lesson that bullying isn’t all that bad because the effects of bullying can be undone with the snap of your fingers. Wait… that can’t possibly be the message, can it?
Hmm…
Well, I can’t find any other lesson to be learned here.
The sad thing is, even if you can solve your bullying problems with magic, you still have parents that sent you to school with a lunch consisting of a juice box, a mandarin orange, and cookies. Jesus, mom, get the kid some goddamn protein. No wonder he’s getting bullied. He can’t build any muscle mass!