The Test That Wasn't a Test

You stand on one leg and stretch your arms out. That was our balance test. Someone pushes against your arm. You can’t hold your balance and tip over. Then you get the PowerBalance band placed in your hand. The test is repeated. You stand firmer than before. You feel it intensely. Everyone around you sees it and wants to try it themselves immediately. A chain reaction of amazement and disbelief.

I did this test thousands of times. Everyone did it. I heard every conceivable explanation for it. And none of them was one where I said, now I get it. But that was a different topic.

No other sales tool came close to this test. Because you feel it in your own body. And what you feel in your own body, you can’t argue away. You want to buy a product immediately that makes you instantly more stable and noticeably stronger.

The problem is: it wasn’t a test. It was a demonstration. The difference seems insignificant at first glance, but at the end of the day it’s enormous. Because a test can fail. It has control groups and blinding conditions and wants to find out what really works. A demonstration can’t fail because it’s built so the outcome is predetermined. But we called it a test. And we didn’t consciously choose that word to avoid calling it a demonstration. Test just sounded more logical.

Our balance test couldn’t fail either. Not necessarily because the product worked, but because the situation was built so the outcome was predictable. The demonstrator knew where to push. It wasn’t that we were manipulating. Many people thought they’d figure it out and assumed it was a bit further out the first time, a bit closer to the body the second time. A few centimeters of difference in the lever arm and you’re standing more stable. But that wasn’t true.

Many blamed the expectation effect. When someone places something in your hand and says this will make you stronger, your body tenses differently. You straighten up unconsciously. Not because the band works, but because you expect it to work. But that wasn’t right either, because most of the time we didn’t even say what was going to happen and the surprise effect was all the greater.

Of course we tried everything internally. The results varied slightly. We could do it so it worked one time and didn’t work the next. Still, everyone knew: the test pointed to placebo. It simply couldn’t be anything else. Some people could offer concrete and plausible-sounding explanations, but my starting point was always: it has to be placebo.

I’m not telling this to defend the product. Placebo is real. The effect exists, it’s measurable and has real impact. People feel better and heal faster. That’s not imagination, it’s widely documented in science.

What interests me today is the question of why we’re so bad at telling a demonstration from proof. And I don’t just mean the people at our trade shows.

Every product demo works on the same principle. You see something impressive in an environment built for it. The software salesperson shows you the one feature that shines, and the financial advisor shows you the chart that goes up. And you think: This works. Because you saw it and felt it. In our case in your own body.

But you didn’t see a test. You saw a demonstration. The difference isn’t in the show, it’s in the question you ask afterward. After a demonstration you ask: Did that work? The answer is always yes because the demo is built that way. After a test you ask: Would the result be the same if I changed the conditions? Nobody wants to ask that question. I didn’t want to ask it back then either.

“Just try it” was our standard line. It sounds open and fair. In reality it’s the opposite of science. It says: Trust your perception. And our perception is the most easily manipulated instrument we have.

I still get a strange feeling today when someone says to me: Just try it. Because I know what that means. It means: We don’t have proof. But we have a demonstration. And that’s usually enough to convince.

This isn’t fraud in the legal sense. It’s the collective agreement that experience matters more than verification. That feeling is enough. That you don’t need to look too closely when something feels good.

It took me years to understand that this was the core of it. Not the hologram or the silicone or the marketing campaign, but this one agreement between seller and buyer: We both pretend the demo is proof. Today I know: It wasn’t.