Something for the perceptive marketer to reflect upon

If you receive my regular emails, you will soon receive news of my planned Copy weekend in Spain, but first let’s see how your brain is working with this little test.

Forget for a moment all the guff you get sent about social media, brand-building and SEO, and concentrate on something worthwhile and meaningful at the end of your long week.

The picture you see was sent me by one of the towering intellectual powerhouses of marketing, my old friend and colleague Daz Valladares.

I have always seen Daz as a kind of mentor, and he certainly knows more about buying media than anyone I know.

 But like all good marketers he is a keen and profound student of human nature. He instantly spots insights that go far beyond the ordinary, and this mould-breaking study of pictorial impact shows such a series of inisghts.

To understand marketing, you must understand people. Analysis of the picture can tell us a lot about how different people think.

For young men, it’s a picture of a lady with a nice derriere but only the most observant will notice that she is crossing a street.

The really observant will notice that she is wearing a thong.

For older men, she appears to be a respectable woman – with noble buttocks – on her way to work.

The more jaded among them will imagine her naked.

Wiser men will ponder the presence of mind of the photographer to take the shot in the face of such beauty and be grateful that they shared it.

For half of the women, this is an ordinary woman who should not have left home dressed that way.

The other half will think she is a slut but wonder where she bought that blouse.

 Older women will imagine the misery that the woman’s curves will cause by the time she reaches 50.

But only children, the extremely intelligent and the celibate will notice that the taxi is being driven by a dog.

If you are thinking of joining me in Spain in late March, I fear there will be nothing quite as insightful as that in store. But it should be good fun.