Marketers and politicians too.
We don’t say them because it’s assumed. And because we’re afraid.
“I might be wrong.”
“I’m just guessing”
“This might be selfishly motivated.”
“It could be that I’m hallucinating.”
“I heard this somewhere but I don’t know firsthand that it’s true.”
“I know I sound certain, but I’m not.”
When an AI doesn’t say these things, we’re frustrated when they turn out to be the case. Because our default in interactions with machines is that they don’t dissemble, confuse or mislead.
Perhaps we should print these caveats out and read them before we read an ad, believe a scammy text or interact with an LLM.
Trust is the building block of cultures that matter. We have long manipulated trust for commercial and political ends, and now machines are following our lead.
It might be us.
Even when there are photos, videos or tape recordings, people find that they can’t agree on what happened.
Our vivid recollections can be vivid, but they might not be accurate.
What would happen if, for a moment, we imagined that our version of what happened might not be the only one?
On a good day, my bongo score looks like this:
Compared to all the people who have played this morning, it’s right at the top. That could be great…
Except I’m not being compared to every player in the world. The first graph is built to compare every player who has never previously won the competition.
Here’s the curve of all players, including the 500 previous champions. To win the day, you need to get through that dip that most players don’t achieve.
Same score, different ranking.
Here’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce running against the other parents at a school picnic:
I’m sure she deflated the egos of quite a few parents, the ones who usually win at these sorts of things.
Choosing our competition is the most productive decision we make each day.
The internet has made the world smaller, and the universe of competitors larger. But it’s still local–awareness, trust and convenience drive choice.
To be chosen, we need to be seen as the best in the world. But we get to choose which world.
Rivian has a new ad, starring Bill Murray.
It’s not a great ad (more on that below) but the remarkable thing is that it features the quirky, beloved and scarce Bill Murray. Between the movie rights, music and Bill, they had to have spent many millions of dollars, and it doesn’t look like they bought a single slot of ad time. For less total cost than a boring Ford commercial in 1985, they hooked up with two icons.
That’s a complete flip from hiring an unknown to pitch your brand of freeze dried coffee but spending millions on network TV.
Thirty years later, the attention equation is now reversed. No one watches an ad on YouTube unless they want to, and so, your talent buy is your media buy.
This is going to amplify a different sort of creative agency as well as give recognizable talent more leverage. A good ad in the TV days was annoying but led to action. A good ad today creates enrollment and buzz. Attention is insufficient, though. Ghostbusters was seen by millions, but it didn’t sell many vintage Hearses.
[And why is this a lousy ad? I love my Rivian, but not because it has a Ghostbuster button. The first job of advertising a new brand is to earn it a position, to give us a story about what you’d like to stand for. Who it’s for and how we’re going to feel when we wear the label you’re offering us. Jaguar dropped the ball when they re-branded last year. AI companies are terrible at this as well, and it appears that Rivian missed a chance with Bill.]
Don’t cross the streams.
PS While we’re on the topic, please don’t buy cheap chocolate.
When focused on the things we can change, dissatisfaction is a powerful tool.
Accepting everything else–the parts we can’t or won’t change–reserves our energy for the places where it’s useful.
The tricky part is telling them apart and then focusing our agency and leverage on the useful.
Solving problems for others is how we create value.
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