Never a Lack of Ideas

Illusions are everywhere in marketing. I'm not talking about the kind of illusions David Copperfield performs nightly. I'm talking about the things organizations do to make customers think something is true when it's not. Because my wife and I are going to see Penn and Teller perform in Las Vegas soon, I thought I'd expose some of the most popular illusions in marketing and then identify what we can learn from them. Let's go... Example: Poop in the Pool A friend of mine recently told me this story from his time as a lifeguard at his neighborhood pool: Whenever someone pooped in the pool, we cleared the area and then fished it out of the water. Then, we were trained to grab an empty two liter bottle we had on hand, go into the bathroom, fill it with water, and dump it in the area in which the poop was found. We'd wait a few minutes, and then open the pool back up. Yikes! My friend went on to say that the pool was already treated heavily with chemicals...