Everyone did only their part

In a supermarket in Assiut, the brightest packets of sweets sit on the lowest shelf, at exactly the height of a five-year-old's eyes. Most parents know what happens next.

Ask the people involved and each has a clear answer.

The designer made the pack cheerful, because that was the brief. The salesman negotiated the low shelf, because that is his job. The shop owner accepted, because the space pays. The parent gave in, because the child was tired and the queue was long. Everyone did their part, and none of them, on their own account, did anything much.

We like to say people answer for what they do. Then we build arrangements that spread the answer so thin that nobody has to give it.

Here is the uncomfortable part for anyone in marketing. We spend our working lives insisting that what we make changes behaviour. That a pack, a placement or a message moves people. If that is true, and it is, then we cannot also claim that the behaviour it causes belongs to someone else.

The same question runs further out. The person who buys the cheapest product without asking how it was made so cheap. The shop that stocks it. The friend who recommends it. Even the people who saw a problem, could have said something, and did not. Staying quiet is also a choice, and it also has consequences.

None of this is simple. But it is closer than we pretend. The child in the aisle, the designer at the desk and the shopper in the queue are not very far from one another.