Ok, it’s storytime kids.

One day, a pamphlet turns up in your mailbox. The pamphlet starts by telling you about a study showing that tap water is highly acidic and nigh-undrinkable. In fact, you shouldn’t drink any tap water. Instead you should buy bottles of water from a particular company – the one who sent you the pamphlet – and look, we’ve got a special deal; you get two free bottles, with subsequent bottles of water only $100 each!

One of your friends, Greg, stops by that afternoon. “Oh, hey, I see you got the pamphlet! Are you going to try the free bottles of water?”

“No. The study is a lie. Tap water isn’t acidic. The pamphlet’s full of crap, its just trying to sell me expensive water.”

“Oh no, you don’t understand. The paragraph about the study is just an analogy. Its just a way of explaining that tap water isn’t very good for you. Did you know that many scientists believe the chlorine in tap water can cause cancer? You have got to try this water, it’s really good.”

“Uh, no thanks.”

“Come on! I spend all my money on this water. I just loved it after the first two bottles.”

“Ok. So you’ve spent thousands of dollars on the water, and you’re telling me that the lie the pamphlet told at the start was for my own good and I should go ahead and buy the water.”

“Absolutely. If you don’t try the water you’ll never know how good it is, and how bad tap water really tastes.”

“Huh. Tell me more about your experience with this company.”

“Well, I won’t lie to you. It’s tough coming up with all the money. And a few weeks ago I even drank a little bit of tap water, by accident you know. I thought it tasted fine and I even had doubts for a bit about spending so much on the bottled water. That night I spent hours on the phone with a company representative talking to him about what happened. He helped me see that the tap water really didn’t taste as good as I thought, and as long as I just kept buying the bottled water I would be fine.”

“Wow. Persuasive.”

“Yeah. In fact, he suggested that if my whole family drank the bottled water I would find it easier to ignore tap water. I thought that was really insightful. I love the company. I’ve started carrying copies of the pamphlet around so I can give them to people who don’t know about bottled water. Hey, did you know they use some of the money from the water to help children in Africa?”

“Really.”

“I can see you’re going to be stubborn about this. I’ll stop pestering you. But trust me, if you ever try any of this water, you’ll love it.”

“Ok Greg.”

Posted by Luke H on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 11:37 pm.