Marketing And Modesty

Human beings have an annoying habit of thinking we know things we don't really know.

In “The Cooling World," April 28, 1975 Newsweek informed us that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that “catastrophic famines might result from…global cooling”

On Sept. 14, 1975 The New York Times told us that this global cooling "may mark the return to another ice age."

And on May 21, 1975 the Times said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" because it has been "well established" that the climate in the Northern Hemisphere "has been getting cooler since about 1950."

Seems they were wrong.

Up until a few years ago, we thought we knew what the universe was made of. There was matter, which was largely atoms composed of electrons, neutrons, and protons. And there were four forces - gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

It turns out we have no idea what the universe is made of. Science now believes 94% of the universe is "dark matter" and "dark energy." Which is another way of saying, we have no fucking clue what it is.

My psychiatrist friends often tell me how unfathomable a lot of human behavior is. And yet 27-year-old account planners seem to understand behavior so thoroughly.

If the A students who study physics, math, climate and medicine are so often misguided, do we really believe the C students who study advertising and marketing know anything?

I’ve been around advertising and marketing a long time, and I’ve noticed something. I’ve noticed that we have a lot of unreliable opinions.

I had a long and pleasant career in the advertising business. I’ve had the opportunity to create multi-million dollar campaigns for brands like McDonald’s and Toyota, and Bank of America and Chevrolet.

I’ve been invited to speak in dozens of countries.

My opinions and comments have been sought by organizations like the NY Times, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal and other substantial media groups around the world.

And I’ve written 4 books about advertising that were Amazon #1 sellers.

I don’t say any of this to brag. I say it for the exact opposite reason — to make an important point. The point is this - I don’t know anything. I am faking it. I always have been. I have no idea why anybody buys anything. I have no idea why you buy Coke instead of Pepsi, or Nike instead of Adidas. As a matter of fact, I have no idea why I buy Coke.

As we used to say back in Brooklyn, I don’t know shit.

In my career I’ve worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of marketing and advertising people. And I mean no disrespect, but I don’t think they knew shit either. Mostly what we do is precision guessing.

I think we would be wise to keep open minds and admit that a great deal of our understanding of consumer behavior is incomplete at best, and wrong at worst.

We would do ourselves and our industry a whole lot of good to exercise a little modesty and discretion when we claim to know things we don’t really know.