IT IS GOOD TO BE ORDINARY

ARE YOU A COLLEGE TOPPER? Did you go to an Ivy League school? Are you a CEO? Are you in the Top three of your industry charts? Are you in the 30 under 30 list? Have you won this and that award? Do you have a million followers on social media? Do your kids go to tennis, chess, Math Olympiad, school drama, or violin classes after school? Did you go to the US open finals?

- Srinath Sridharan & Steve Correa

From all around us, there is so much pressure to be a winner. To be extra ordinary. To be special. To be a notch above everyone else. This pressure is simply not funny. And in most cases, such societal pressure is cruel expectation.

Intellectually, we understand that there is a 'normal curve', a universal axiom that has been known for centuries. The Central Limit Theorem (CLT) avers that (in most common scenarios) anytime "a bunch of things are added up," a normal distribution is going to result. The CLT shows up in all sorts of real-world situations: height, roll of dice, toss of coin, IQ, Income distribution, shoe size, student's report card, or birth weight. Even as an average individual, most of us also intuitively get this. Yet, there is pressure on every one to be above average!

One sees advertisements featuring celebrities for brand endorsements with their halo of "extraordinariness" to peddle "ordinary" products used by "ordinary" consumers. Heart of hearts, we know that those celebrities won't be travelling to the local suburban market in that swanky car, to ever shop for those FMCG products. And for all we care, they may not even actually ever use some of those domestic branded products. Yet we enjoy those ads, and even believe in those products being featured. Have you ever wondered – Why?

Why not have ads that feature “ordinary” people? Will we find those ads memorable and credible?

Materialism & ‘Maange More’