They weren’t shaking hands with panties?
I made them by HAND…
wow!
Now the question is… how to I go about extracting vials of squalene and hexadecanoic acid from successful people so I can sell it to the masses?
Maybe when people have some someone specifically going out of their way to record what happens to them after they shake hands with strangers, they become curious? There are many, many weird “tells” to what people say, where they look, and what they do - when they want to see what you will do.
For an obvious example, if a room full of people are told to watch what happens when somebody walks in and eats the food there. Most of them will tense up and stare as they person approaches the food and begins to eat it, in ways they would not have done otherwise. If the subject is alert, this might cause them to be aware that they are being observed with regards to the food.
Same deal with shaking hands. If I knew that strangers were walking into a study area just to shake my hand, I might wonder what was up with those handshakes. Those who walk in to initiate the handshakes are going to have similar “tells” if they are aware of the purpose of the study. They would shake hands differently. Maybe looking at the subjects hands as they enter the room, looking more at their own hands as they shake. People are quite funny in how they direct their attention with regards to what they want people to notice, or not to notice.
The question to ask first would be “successful at what?” Gauge of success all depends upon what their goals may be. There is no way to know that whatever made them successful at that would carry over to what another person was doing.
My guess is that the test subjects were not told they were in some sort of hand shaking study. As you said, that would potentially skew any results.
The article also says that they were “surreptitiously filmed” and “some were wired up to a variety of physiological instruments so that airflow to the nose could be measured without them realising this was the intention.”.
Let us glance back over the events of the day: saw several writers, one of them asking me if you could go to Russia by land (he thought Russia was an island, I suppose); disagreed liberally with the editor of a review who to all my objections kept saying: “Here we are on the side of respectability,” implying that all the other periodicals were run by rascals; bowed to twenty or more persons of whom fifteen were unknown to me; distributed hand shakes in about the same proportion without having first taken the precaution of buying gloves…
-Charles Baudelaire, At One O’Clock In the Morning
I wonder how many times he sniffed his hands. And wearing gloves does seem like a pretty simple precaution if you’re worried about picking something up.
I know, I read all of this.
My point was that even if the subjects did not know what they were being studied for - it is not unlikely to assume that the other participants did know. That those conducting the experiment acting differently as a result of this skews the results in ways which are extremely difficult to quantify.
In short, I am more likely to examine my hands if the person shaking them is thinking about me doing so.
Or I could just slap a picture of two half naked models on the bottle of extract and let the masses decide.
Why do you assume that this is any different? Don’t masses of people still need to decide who they are and what they are doing? Slapping a picture just sounds like a lazy way to evade being yourself. Pictures don’t talk, and “models” implies that your picture is not even of a real scenario. Each person who sees your bottle is going to interpret it for themselves, and it may or not even result in ant sort of “decision” for them.
You are fired, Im going with a different marketing firm.
Marketing is extinct. In the modern world, people can find whatever they need. If you need to hire people to create need - there isn’t any.
In a proper double-blind trial, the people coming in to shake hands wouldn’t be aware that this is what was being studied either.
Say what now?
Please explain, then, the ever-rising cost of, just for starters, time-slots for Super Bowl commercials?
Hmm, “creating need”… Isn’t there an entire industry devoted precisely to that task? Dear me, what IS the name of that industry…?
Do you live in the forest?
I read the article, assuming I’d see numbers like 1 person out of that 153 did it before shaking hands and 2 did it after, but apparently this is considered common behavior that everyone does. Does anyone else find this unlikely? I’ve had enough 2+ hour meetings that started with handshakes to know that hands are not hovering near faces the way these researchers seem to think is the norm.
The costs are not “rising”, rather, they cost more.
How I explain this is that there is a demand for marketing still, but the discipline has outlived it’s purpose. In a broadcast media system the control of communication my a minority meant that people had to pay them for publicity. And that anything which was not broadcast in this media content had no exposure. None of this is any longer the case. Pretty much anybody can find out about any product, service or idea. Put forth by anyone. Anywhere in the world. There is no longer any valid reason to assume that 1. people need what you are offering, or 2. that if they needed it from you, they wouldn’t do something about it themselves.
Hmm… things which tenuously cling to existence, despite the reasons for them coming into being no longer being valid? I think “obsolete” might be more apposite. But “extinct” might convey a more organic, evocative flavor.
Do you usually resort to making things personal when you strongly disagree with what somebody says? I live in a jungle - of cables.
I was reacting to your authoritative- let me tell you how it is type of posturing. I was wanting you to lighten up a bit, but I am sorry for any offense you took.
You raise interesting points and the future always includes change, but saying marketing is extinct is way off. Im slammed with hundreds of ads a day from radio and TV to web banners and t-shirts and bumper stickers and Cool Tools and billboards and before and during movies… its never ending. Tim Cook just hosted an infomercial and the entire world watched. Most of consumerism is based on want, not need.
