Channel Intelligence Blog

Fallacies and Product Promotion

In describing products, there is a natural tension between accuracy and exaggeration. It behooves us to be as enthusiastic as possible about a product while, at the same time, too great a departure from reality is likely to make the consumer suspicious, or worse yet interested but for the wrong reasons, leading to clicks with no sales. It’s a good idea to understand that there are many forms of enthusiasm and to use or avoid them consciously rather than fall into them accidentally. The realms of rhetoric and logic have made a very careful study of the subject, but oddly enough, by far the best source I have ever come across is a marvelous little book called Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought – what follows is largely drawn from this source:

The fallacy of many questions involves the idea of asking questions without answering them. You pose a whole series of puzzlers providing the impression that you have really thought in depth about the area under discussion. You are of course under no obligation to answer any of the questions.

The fallacy of false dichotomies is where you propose two positions; one being the one you want to promote the other being something that you know has a fatal flaw in it. You demolish the flawed alternative leaving the customer with no choice on the table other than the one you want to see adopted.

The fallacy of metaphysical questions involves solving a non-empirical problem by empirical means.

The fallacy of fictional questions involves the neat device of asking a question about some situation you invented. You phrase the question and the situation in such a way that you know the answer will favor your position.

The fallacy of semantical questions involves confusing actual happenings with descriptions of actual happenings. There is a wonderful illustration of this in an interaction between Alice and the White Knight in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

“You are sad,” the Knight said in an anxious tone: “let me sing a song to comfort you…. The name of the song is called ‘Haddock’s Eyes.’”

“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.

“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man.’”

“Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.

“No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways and Means’: but that’s only what it’s called you know!”

“Well what is the song then?” said Alice who was by this time completely bewildered.

“I was coming to that.” The Knight said. “The song really is  ‘A-sitting On A Gate’: and the tune’s my own invention.”

We should think carefully about how products are described, categorized and labeled as there are numerous and sometimes very subtle pitfalls  and opportunities in these things.

The Delivery Person...

Imagine a hypothetical delivery man. He has a parcel he has to deliver and a document that specifies how it is to be delivered. The document describes where to delivery it, who to deliver it to, whether it has to be signed for or not and so on.

Our hypothetical deliveryman arrives at the address specified on the document. He sees that the name on the office door corresponds to the person who is supposed to be receiving the parcel. The person isn’t there. What does the deliver man do? He looks at the document and sees that it says the parcel has to be signed for but doesn’t say who has to sign it, so he goes to the office next door and says, “Do you mind signing for this? It’s for so-and-so next door. Great thanks. I’ll just leave it on his chair.”

The point of the story is that the deliveryman did not literally do what the document, said which was to deliver the parcel to so-and-so at some address. Instead, he left it for so-and-so and got someone else to sign for it. This is a perfectly normal human process. Everything we do by way of following an instruction of some sort involves interpretation. We mediate between the abstractions represented by the instructions and what actually happens in the world around us.

What is on the deliveryman’s document is data, the mediation process is information. If you prefer, information is interpreted data, or putting it another way, information is data that has consequences.

Let’s look at this in the context of people buying and selling goods. In a traditional store, the customer can see and touch the goods being bought. There is eye contact, speech, and tangible, physical presence between the customer and the merchant. This presence provides a context for the experience that results in an immediate understanding of what is being offered and what is being asked. It is the basis for a rich information exchange involving the customer and the merchant, and the customer and the general environment in which the interaction occurs. There are many dimensions to this but, for example, recent studies have indicated there are regions in the brain that react to the presence of others by an internal mimicking process that involves a literal replaying of the other’s actions involving the same neural processes as though the observer were doing the action themselves. This profound influence between physically present participants in an exchange is very difficult to replace in situations involving distance learning, remote working and contractual interactions carried out where the participants are not physically present.

Categories, Attributes and Keywords

Let’s face it, any one of these topics is a mess. It seems as though no one can agree on categories, everyone thinks attributes are vital but no one seems able to make them actually work and everyone is nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof so far as keywords are concerned. Keywords are a disaster from a search point of view but there’s too much money being made for us to be really honest about them. The emperor is stark naked. Keywords really don’t work but, as an industry, we’re reluctant to admit it.