What a one-year-old taught me about direct response advertising.

My daughter just learned how to share. She’s one.

After a year of taking, it suddenly occurred to her that she can give. And she enjoys it.

Now in the middle of eating, she’ll hold out a Cheerio in her grubby, food-and-slobber encrusted fingers for me or the dogs.

My first reaction was not as honest as the dogs’. I pretended to take the food, chewing my ersatz morsel with melodramatic pleasure.

My daughter knew what I was doing. It wasn’t long before I noticed that she would offer to share with the dogs a little more often and with me a little less.

I know my daughter is an absolute genius, but I’m willing to concede that most kids do the same thing. Children pick up on stuff. They know when their parents are being insincere.

Which got me to thinking.

If we all had parents who pretended to take the mangled Cheerio, we all learned that our generosity was not truly appreciated. Would this explain why so many of us are so reluctant to give?

More relevant to our business, would this explain why consumers are often so suspicious of advertising?

Follow me on this.

I try to give. My generosity is not appreciated. I come to believe that generosity in general is not appreciated. So I learn that it’s not appropriate to appreciate generosity.

Years later, I’m watching TV and on comes a commercial message that contains a ‘special offer’.

“Hmm. How generous,” I think. “What am I to make of that?”

So now I’m at a crossroads. The next time my daughter offers me a Cheerio, do I react sincerely, showing her how much I appreciate her generosity and thereby setting her on the path toward a rewarding life full of love and happiness, moderated only a little by the occasional disappointment she’ll inevitably experience when the ‘special offer’ she falls for turns out not to be all that special?

Or do I pretend to take the Cheerio, breaking her little heart and setting her up to become a cynical consumer, unwilling to believe that the people putting out marketing communications could possibly be motivated by anything other than a desire to fool her into buying something she doesn’t need for more than she really ought to pay?

It’s an easy decision. That Cheerio is kind of nasty.