Marketing and Mysticism

Marketing and Mysticism

 

Marketing is all about the appliance of science and good marketing strategies owe more to deep insights into consumer behaviour rather than any hocus pocus theories, says John D. Byrne.

The high priests of ancient Egypt derived much, if not all of their authority from the accuracy with which they were able to predict of the extent of the Nile's annual inundation. In fact, their ‘supernatural' powers were based on very real-world measurements, using devices no more sophisticated than a decent calendar and a number of well-placed graduated stakes, embedded at appropriate points in the river.

It is a small step to take, to move from prediction to the pretence of control - given foreknowledge of the effect, opportunists can always supply a ‘cause', over which they  which they then claim mastery. In a turbulent and frequently hostile world, humanity craves such control and admires, even worships, those who purport to wield it.

Recently, I listened, of an afternoon, to one of the nation's favourite radio shows. A well-known Irish ‘Mentalist' was conducting what he claimed to be an experiment in mind control, on the audience of, probably, several hundred thousand listeners. What he asked everyone to do was to place three common items - a key, a coin and a card (a Laser or a store loyalty card , for instance) - in a row, left to right, on a table, in any order they wished. He then asked them to do the following:

Firstly, take the coin and swop it with the item (key or card) immediately to its right; if there is no item to its right, do nothing.    

Next, take the card and swop it with the item (key or coin) immediately to its right; again, if there is no item to its right, do nothing.   

Finally, take the key and swop it with the item (coin or card) immediately to its right; as previously, if there is no item to its right, do nothing.     

The idea was that he was going to use his mental powers to ‘force' one of the items to end up in the middle of the row of as many of the rows created by listeners as possible. He gave the audience time to do as instructed and then announced that he had ‘willed‘ the key to be in the middle.   

And, lo and behold, for the overwhelming majority of the audience, this turned out to be the case - out of the original three candidate items, the key had ended up in the middle, for over 80% of participants. A far more stunningly effective example of mass manipulation than ever Yuri Geller could have hoped for.

Or was it? So taken was I with the demonstration that I devoted fifteen minutes to examining the possibilities. Firstly, there are six ways (and six ways only!) that all three items can be placed in a row - try it yourselves, if you don't believe me. Applying the Mentalist's instructions in sequence, there is only one initial set up  - coin, card, key, left-to-right - that doesn't end up with the key in the middle position, at the end of the process.  So the odds are 5 - to -1 in favour of the Mentalist getting it right. If only my chances of winning the lotto were such odds-on! A good trick and fair play to the ‘Mentalist' - even the Egyptian high priests, one feels, would have been envious of such a convincing demonstration. But a trick, nonetheless!

Marketing is an applied science, backed up by an extensive literature and a comprehensive and robust body of research. It has been recognised as a scientific discipline for three quarters of a century. Indeed, publications like IMJ have a venerable pedigree  - the American Marketing Association, for example, which now boasts of a network of experienced marketers over 30,000 strong, including leading marketing academics, researchers and practitioners, first published its Journal of Marketing in 1936. As such, marketing's academic roots go back further than those of particle physics or radio-astronomy. Yet, while no serious commentator would dream of referring to a scientist like Stephen Hawking as a ‘guru', it is an epithet routinely used when referring to marketing professionals and academics.

So, why do we stand for such trivialisation of our hard-won credentials? I think part of the reason lies in the ad hoc way problems are presented to us. Our discipline, unlike engineering or accountancy, is little understood, outside of our small circle and we are, effectively, a chapel of last resort, a Hail Mary when ‘conventional' business measures have been tried and have failed.

But I also think that, for far too long, we have revelled in the cult of personality that surrounds some of our most successful colleagues and marketing dynasties. We harbour a certain pride in the belief that great marketers are born, not made. Worst of all, we may even secretly aspire to being perceived as controllers of markets, rather than skilled interpreters of the signs they are giving us. Like the high priests, we may succumb to the adulation we receive when we convince others that we have mystical powers of persuasion and ignore the fact that, inevitably, such bogus claims will get ‘found-out'.   

We must dispense, once and for all, with the notion, however attractive, that we are ‘Mentalists', controlling the choices of the masses, as high priests once claimed to regulate the flow of a great river. Our training has instead provided us with the expertise to know what signs to look  for, to interpret  them correctly, to evaluate them  accurately, to develop appropriate strategies, to compute their probabilities of success and to fine-tune our market offerings accordingly. That's really all we can do. And I believe that's more than enough.