This is why things in commercials don’t look like they do in real life pic.twitter.com/sH2vrLAm7g #HowThingsWork
— Farbod Saraf (@farbodsaraf) November 25, 2018
This is expectation vs reality in .gif form, and shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever ordered a hamburger from a fast food restaurant.
Of course, the practice of fooling the senses and building up the expectations vs reality is not limited to food. It happens with the worker who has a puffed up resume and LinkedIn profile, but can’t do the analysis work that the job requires. Or the tech product that promises to reinvent how our company communicates, but once implemented, turns out to be more trouble than its worth.
It’s unpopular to show the truth, but this is slowly changing: In food there’s a big focus on organic, “real” food, which, combined with the the popularity of instagramming meals has made messy food popular again. But the good news is nearly every other area of culture and business is changing too—giving more visibility to the buyer, and less opportunity for the seller to hide behind smoke and mirrors.
What if we got out ahead of this change, and started to show up with the truth from the beginning? Admitting we’re strong in X but not in Y. Making it clear what’s the vision for the product vs what’s a tangible feature today. It might make for a less photogenic hamburger, but it sends a clear signal: we’re not hiding something behind the guise of “perfection”.