The perfect product: October 25, 1999 issue of New Thinking

October 25, 1999 New Thinking:
The perfect product

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October 25, 1999

The perfect product

By Gerry McGovern

What’s the difference when shaving between running one blade three times across your face and running three blades once? We’ve all seen the ads. “Shaves you closer and closer still.” And now we have the breakthrough, the razor with three blades from Gillette. Take a bow.

And it’s supposed to be kind on the skin, not causing as much friction because you have to shave less. But I can’t figure it out. Me, I think you cause the exact same friction on the skin by running three blades across the skin in one razor, as you do by running one blade three times across the skin.

Let me tell you a secret. I always use cheap razors, the single blade kind. You see, I’ve tried the lot and I’ve found that the simple, single blade ones are the best. The fancy ones are just too clever for their own good. Twin blades are all well and good but the gap between them is a great place for hair to lodge. No, I’m a single blade bloke myself.

Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as the perfect product. You know, a product that is just about as efficient as it can be. What happens then? This is an age that demands something new and thus logic dictates that the perfect product must change and become ‘new’ in some way.

Now, supposing that in changing the perfect product so that it can be ‘new and improved’ it is made less perfect. Could there be a situation where we end up replacing our perfect product with an inferior version simply because we have been led to believe that change is something we must do?

It’s good to dream. It’s good to imagine. It’s good to occasionally take off on flights of fancy. Increasingly, that’s what ads would seem to be for. Absolute dreamland. The art of creating the exact opposite to the reality.

Take for example the majority of ads for cars. Have you noticed that these ads show cars invariably driving in vast, open landscapes, or swerving elegantly as some rocks rush down a mountain pass, or eating up the wide, open road? Car ads tell us that driving is an adventure when we all know that most driving is gridlock, traffic jam hell. But still they keep selling the dream and we keep buying. And if it makes us happy, what’s wrong with that?

Wasn’t it Marshall McLuhan who said that the news needs to be bad so that the ads can look good? It’s a strange world we live in, a world where many of us sell dreams for a living.

The Internet is a functional thing though. It doesn’t suit dream-selling, particularly if the dreams require a lot of visual images. It’s a place where you come for information, where you come to know.

It’s great to see the Internet thrive but it does worry me that we are generally reaching a point in the economic evolution of society where many products are approaching their ‘perfect’ state. As we move forward, we may find that the ads for our products are getting better, but that the products themselves are getting worse simply because we need something ‘new’ to sell or buy.

Gerry McGovern

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The Internet doesn’t suit dream-selling. It’s a place where you come for information, where you come to know.