November
04 , 2005
The Brief Message
The commercial break during a
TV program that you have been avidly watching seldom
qualifies to be called brief like a bikini with
a tacit prospect. No wonder the program host has
to make an explicit request: ‘Please don’t
go away, we will be back after this brief message.’
More often than not, the message is so long, repetitious
and boring that you forget the sequence of the program
you had been watching earlier.
A disgusted Einstein would have exclaimed: ‘I
don’t bother you about relativity, why bother
me with your miracle grinder!’
An honest host would simply declare: ‘We are
looking for fat wallets with credulous persons attached
to them’, or ‘Customers wanted, no experience
necessary, gullibility preferred’
Honesty and salesmanship are two different departments
like honesty and politics. In an election tumult,
a Republican thinks the Democrat to be dishonest
and a Democrat puts it the other way around. It
is a free season for all misleaders. But, in the
field of salesmanship, it is a year round open season
for half-truths.
America, producing one-third of world products,
is a buyers’ market, and advertising is the
invisible oil that lubricates the country’s
industry.
Advertising is a finely honed art today. But, as
far back as 1700, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the eminent
British wit and lexicographer had already concluded:
‘The trade of advertising is now so near perfection
that it is not easy to propose any improvement.
But, as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination
to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a
moral question to these masters of the public ear,
whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly
with our passions.’
The practitioners of the art of advertising have
mastered the craft to such perfection over the past
304 years since the above statement of Dr. Johnson
that now it is not sometimes but almost always that
the game is played ‘wantonly’.
A glib-tongued salesperson makes a filibustering
senator look tongue-tied. He is trained to do that.
An optimist invented the airplane; a pessimist invented
the parachute. A salesperson sells both to a person
who is not really in need of either. It is almost
an axiom now that a successful salesperson will
sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.
Advertising is a hide and seek game in which a customer
when sought is maneuvered to pay willingly twice
as much as the item is really worth. He is led to
believe that he has struck a bargain. The more you
spend in this game, the more you are made to think
that you have saved till you pile up such a huge
debt that the only way out of it is to file for
bankruptcy.
A smart and successful salesperson puts up with
a smile when his samples are flung out of the window,
his ancestry is questioned, and he is sometimes
thrown down flights of stairs. He is seldom provoked
as he never feels insulted. That is what the textbooks
on salesmanship teach.
But, such books strike as outdated when you find
these days a handsome salesman rejecting the offer
of a free ride plus further possibilities by a pretty
and seductive driver simply because her car is not
insured by his company! The same sales fellow is
unwilling to accept a Porsche in a bet on a sure
winning hand of cards just because the car is not
insured by his company! As a baby, he might have
been dropped on his head by the nurse.
To me he appears an inveterate loser. The nut might
still be walking to his destination with empty pockets
having lost all in the card game.
If you are in business, you have to advertise unless
your society is experiencing acute shortages owing
to war or some other calamity. At one time a person
had to wait for months to secure a PIA ticket as
the company had total monopoly in the country on
air travel. Yet, it kept taking out expensive advertisements
in national papers. Reason: it had an advertisement
budget and the concerned executive did not wish
the amount to lapse! Commissions? Don’t ask
me please; it is a sensitive issue at least for
two former Premiers who are still contesting such
charges.
If you are in business and you do not advertise,
it is like winking at a pretty girl in the dark.
You are no less a nut than the insurance man mentioned
above who refuses to take the ride as the young
lady’s car is not insured by his company.
Decades back when making a fast buck was the highest
consideration, if not morality, insurance caused
more fires than going to bed with lighted cigarettes.
The insurance companies have learned many lessons.
The small print on an insurance policy takes care
now of all eventualities. What it says on one page,
it contradicts on the next.
Insurance companies figure out first when you are
most likely to die. They then assure you that you
would live a couple of decades longer. That is where
you become a sucker.
Sales people are generally big problems to their
bosses, to their spouses, to their credit managers,
hotel clerks and even their colleagues. They draw
and spend more expense money with less effort and
get smaller value out of it than any other civilized
group with the possible exception of politicians.
They come in at the most inopportune time, under
the slightest pretext, stay longer, ask more personal
questions, make more noise and mistakes, pacify
more belligerents, tell more lies, explain more
discrepancies - yet they keep the economy moving.
We can’t do without them. Nothing happens
until somebody sells something! That is how business
is structured in this country.
Celebrities who endorse products cost good money.
So, some businesses have started making use of the
talents (?) in the animal world.
Shimmering creatures - a green lizard or gecko,
a brown rooster, a snow-white duck, a pretty lap-dog,
to mention just a few - come now on the screen endorsing
products used only by humans.
From the days of Aesops in the sixth century BC
to Kalila and Damna (Arabic), Anwar-e-Suhaili (Persian),
and the Arabian Nights of the middle ages to the
modern day superb fables of Disney and in the sleek
comic books, people have always used talking animals
to convey moral and even political themes.
This technique was often resorted to when an intolerant
despot was occupying the throne. Freedom of speech
is a great blessing of modern time. One does not
have to resort to a cock and bull story. The cocks
are instead put in a pit to fight it out. It is
called a debate in the modern day civilized parlance.
The animals in the fables also exaggerate but without
offending your intelligence like the fast-talking
salesman behind the counter. You can make an allowance
for their liberties with truth and place them in
the category of art. For, in the words of the famous
writer and thinker, G. K. Chesterton, “Exaggeration
is the definition of art”.
Evidently, such a definition does not apply to the
glib talk of a salesperson convincing a customer
that the canary he is trying to sell him can hatch
an ostrich egg!
- Arifhussaini@hotmail.com
