Seeing Red
Quick, finish the following sentence. The color defined by the information given inside the box shown to the left is ______? Before you can answer you must know that “nm” is the abbreviation for nanometer and you must know that light reflected at a wavelength of 600 nanometers is perceived as color red.
But even if you know both of these things an important question remains. Does knowing that light reflected at 600 nanometers is colored red equal the experience of actually seeing █?
It’s tempting to believe that it does. This is not the case, however, and a simple thought experiment will illustrate just how big a difference there is between these two complementary, yet vastly different, methods of communication.
Assume you are a colorblind scientist. Your brain is able to understand the concept of color but since the color receptors in your eyes (the cones) do not function, you cannot see colors. As a result of your condition, when you look at an apple you cannot know what color it is unless you point a spectrometer at the apple and record the wavelength of the reflected light.
You decide to study a close friend who is able to experience color. Over time you become able to exactly describe the entirety of color processing going on inside of your friend’s mind. You trace the process from the moment light enters your friend’s eyes and passes through all the color processing parts of your friend’s brain. You even identify the neural activity which allows your friend to report, “I see red.” From a scientific point of view you know everything there is to know about color recognition.
You approach your friend with a detailed report and announce, “This is what’s going on inside of your brain when you see color.” Your friend is very likely to react to your presentation disapprovingly by saying, “Sure that may be what is going on inside of my brain, but I am also actually seeing color. When I look at a red apple, where exactly in that report does it show the color █?” What your friend is requesting is an explanation for what Manna Groups calls basic and invariable meaning – the actual first hand, ineffable experience of seeing █.
What you, the scientist, presented to your friend is not basic and invariable meaning. It is a translation of basic and invariable meaning. This thought experiment clearly demonstrates that a translation (600nm) does not equal the personal basic and invariable human emotion of seeing █. The translation is clearly complementary, but it is not equal. Something is lost in the translation.
There is a solution to ameliorate this situation, we call it Sculpture – the practice of creating marketing messages and materials which safeguard against translation loss.
The purpose of this document is to proclaim that marketing messages built upon a translated description of a product or service will fail. Such messages are to effective marketing as 600nm is to █. Marketing messages succeed only when the basic and invariable meaning already stored within each of us are Sculpted to connect to the product or service being offered.
Bob
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Matt
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