just like that

Of late, I have had very little time to blog. My posts, as a result have grown longer and longer ... there is so much to fit into one post when I do get the time to write. (Though I realize that I have an inherent tendency to write long posts anyway :))

I don't know how many of you have noticed the new soups ads ... If you have noticed, the ads say "no added MSG" or something along those lines.

A positive way of looking at that disclaimer is that they are being scrupulously honest. Most soups contain tomatoes, mushrooms and other things that are known to naturally contain MSG or the G part of it anyway ... and they are accounting for this in the ads. Remarkably honest.

The other way to look at it is that they know that there is MSG in their soup - and enough of it to put a disclaimer ... but why? Do they outsource production and don't they know the ingredients used by the 3rd party? Are they being lazy and not really measuring how much MSG on an average a particular soup will have given their methods of preparation? Do they know what they are selling?

I could even sell a packet of pure MSG and claim that it has "no added MSG".

As far as I am personally concerned, I couldn't care less whether they added MSG in my soup or not. I suspect that I would probably prefer it if they actually did. However, this pointless disclaimer has made me fretful enough to avoid buying these soups, preferring to go in for food items that do not make claims that I do not understand.

Communication skills matter. Between what I say and what the other person hears, is a huge gulf. There is the perception of the speaker, the perception of the listener. Further, not to be ignored are the perception of the speaker about the listener and vice-versa. If my granny told me that she hadn't added MSG to my meal, I wouldn't think about it twice for example :)

In a world where for various reasons, people have less and less time to understand, or come back and check whether they have got it right, it becomes imperative that we take responsibility for making sure that any communication we have is as unambiguous as possible especially when we want it to be that way - in ads for example.