Boron - Chapter 08

Give it a try. It's a nice alternative once in a while to eating or having a soft drink.

Now, back to marketing. You know, one of the remarks I hear all the time when I ask someone what they think of one of my ads goes something like this: "Oh, I'm not a good person to ask. I never buy anything by mail."

Really. Mail order sales run into the billions of dollars each year but rarely will you run into anyone who admits to being a mail order buyer.

Personally, I think all these non-mail order buyers are the same people who don't read the "National Enquirer."

Once again, it must be all those Martian invaders.

What I am doing here is redundantly making a point and I am going to be even more redundant. Here's another little glimpse into one of the vagaries of human behavior: Once I asked at class at USC how many of them preferred to go to plays more than movies.

Lots of people raised their hands.

"Bull!" I said to them. "You are all fooling yourselves and I'm going to prove it." I then asked for a show of hands of those people who had seen a play in the last week or so.

No hands.

I then asked to see the hands of people who had seen a movie in the last week or so.

Many hands.

Bond, this phenomena is common. All of us, including thee and me, have a slightly shrewd idea of ourselves. We often try to convince others and ourselves that we are something we are not, something we have an idea we "should" be.