Being Point

Tag: credibility

  • How Do You Feel About Selling By Huge Advertising Campaigns?

    Advertising is a mammoth selling machine to influence us to buy products and services.  Huge amounts of money are spent annually to convince us that we need to be improved: to smell better, to look younger, to be considered sexy based on the cars we drive and the clothes we wear.

    Selling by companies using mass media – and now the web – is virtually a science driven by psychology and often manipulation of our self images and identities.  Without realizing it, we can be influenced by advertising which sells us on particular world views.

    What is your relationship to advertising?  Do you tune it out or edit it out?  What kind of credibility does that kind of selling provide for you in making day-to-day buying decisions?  Is this kind of selling honorable and useful? How conscious can we keep our buying decisions based on the selling that takes place in national advertising campaigns?

  • Promises And Personal Reputation

    Making promises can be a powerful ingredient of personal growth as long as promise-making is done in good faith with a complete intention to honor the promise.  We’ve talked in Study Hall about the definition of a brand (in business) as a set of promises, and there is similarity in how promise-making affects one’s personal reputation.

    The more often we make and keep promises, the greater our reputation for reliability and credibility.

    Can you think of promises that you have made that have had you grow beyond what you thought possible?  Have you ever tried to renegotiate a promise when faced with difficulty in delivering? What was the result?

    Who in your life has the best reputation for keeping promises? Who has the worst?What did you learn from each person?