Immunity to selling

No matter how smart one thinks one is - I don't think we can be completely immune to psychological bias.  Ads by their nature are very persuasive and employ many psychological tricks.

Some of course we know - that diamonds are so expensive simply because of the De Beers cartel. I always watch ads about diamonds with a wry expression. Same for toothpaste ads - they advocate paste that completely lines the toothbrush one end to another. Fact; a pea sized amount is enough.  What about the "five o'clock shadow" term coined by a razor company to sell their razors ?

And then again - Santa Claus's red and white colors - a re-invention by Coca-Cola. Chips and watching sports, two  Alka-Seltzer tablets in a glass when only one would do. I enjoyed this as a kid, there was a cartoon character in the ad :-) Only later realized the significance of the 2 tablets which bubble when dropped in water ! :)

One would think with all this - we are armed to the teeth against ads and their persuasiveness.

Yet .... couple of incidents made me realize that even with all this information, it is not easy to dodge psychology.

1. Consider the anchoring effect [#].Recently when I went shopping for shoes - the ones marked higher I mentally laughed at and purchased the lower priced ones. However after coming home - I feel the shoes were not worth even that lower price ! Got conned by the oldest retailing trick ! :)

2. Like most people - I get birthday mails from my bank, services I have used, retailers etc. Mostly I just ignore them. After all I do know it is not so difficult to program a mail to be sent on the appropriate day. It is just a scheduled event after all ! :)

My relationship with a particular NGO has been a long term one. So this year, I was totally taken aback to get a call in person from them on my birthday to wish me !

Now ; I know all the cynical reasons they made the call ; yet that did not stop me from feeling pleased at the personal touch ! LOL..... Perhaps next year I will not be susceptible but for now ---- can you see the irony ? I am happy at being remembered by some unknown person who probably got a reminder on his desktop/mail and proceeded to call me as part of his job function !!!! While they were in  no danger at being dropped by me - I will not be dissociating with them anytime soon ! ;)

I have reluctantly realized - it is fallacy to think to one is immune to selling tricks ! :)