Believing beyond seeing

Mankind’s propensity to believe in perception rather than truth never ceases to amaze me. Certainly, the media and communications industries are frequent victims to perception playing a far more powerful role than facts. The advertising industry has long homed in on this anomaly by using perception as a way of managing the attention of consumers. Politicians, especially in this country, seem to have no idea of the power of perception.

Market research is a wonderful business tool, but sometimes opportunity arises out of perception rather than the cold hard facts that are born out of reality.

This is so particularly concerning marketing services, such as short term insurance.

Whoa! Hang on — don’t turn the page! This isn’t going to be an article on how to buy that necessary evil i*n*s*u*r*a*n*c*e (heaven forbid I should completely ruin your Sunday).

No, it’s all about management of perceptions. The dreaded I-word is coincidental, trust me.

About 30 years ago I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of years in Europe doing a lot of skiing and the occasional bit of research into international trading. Having had city life in chunks, I chose as a base of operations the tiny village of Dingy-St Clair in the mountains of south-eastern France, not far from Annecy and about an hour’s drive from Geneva. At the end of our valley was the chateau in which St Bernard of dog fame was born.

The first thing I noticed about the house I rented in a five-hectare meadow just outside the village was that the doors sported myriad locks, deadbolts and security chains. The windows all had steel shutters. Strange indeed for a place that on the face of it was the epitome of idyllic peace.

Either the inhabitants of that part of France were unaware that World War II had been over for 30 years, or housebreaking was a popular regional sporting activity.

The intensity with which my landlord insisted that windows and doors be locked at night and when leaving the house empty, for even a minute or two, prompted me to put my first skiing sortie into the mountains on hold and drive into Annecy to buy some insurance cover.

The manager of the insurance agency listened to what I had in mind and smirked that particularly Gallic smirk reserved for Anglophones who try to give the impression that they were born and bred in France.

Before giving me an estimate of what the premium would be, he told me I would have to go to my nearest police station and get from them statistics of housebreaking and theft in my village. Quite clever!

I popped in to my local gendarmerie and was assured I would have the information within days. Two days later I went back and didn’t even manage to get through the door when an excited gendarme came bolting out, waving a piece of paper.

“I’ve found it, I’ve found it,” he exclaimed. “Found what?” I asked.

“A case of house-breaking in your village…it was on June 24, 1765.”

I didn’t bother to go back to the insurance agent, but phoned him instead. “Forget the insurance — there hasn’t been a single case of housebreaking in my village for the past 212 years. I’ll take my chances, thanks.”

The place was peacefully idyllic, after all. So why the locks, bolts and steel shutters? I asked the local bistro owner, a Swiss who had married a local girl.

He laughed: “Oh don’t take any notice of that; it’s all because of television.”

Apparently the locals avidly watched all the American cops-and-robbers programmes on TV, which scared the daylights out of them. They believed that if that kind of crime could happen in America, it could happen anywhere. After all, McDonald’s had come from America and proliferated at an astonishing rate, so why not crime?

Now, the insurance agent had shown a laudable streak of honesty by suggesting I get police crime statistics. But was he being a good businessman? If it was the perception of the local population that they needed protection, and if insurance would have given them even more peace of mind than the locks, bolts and shutters, wasn’t he entitled to make an honest killing instead of putting them off? Is making a mint out of perceptions good management or bad business?

Of course, if that had been any big city in South Africa in 2010, I know exactly what would have happened.