Worshipping response

Every direct marketing book and website venerates response rate and rightly so. Yet response is to direct marketing what score is to cricket. The real learning is in the journey to response: A mere reading of scores tells next to nothing.

The sensible student pays attention to every ball and stroke, not just their totaled result. I remember Sunil Gavaskar rate a match-saving 50 above all his innings, because he scored it under heavy pressure, on a bad wicket. During my childhood, Sportstar would bring out a series called ‘Their Greatest Moment’. In many cases, this moment wouldn’t be that of their biggest victory, but their most difficult one.

Another statistic that does the rounds – I don’t know if it has any basis in fact – is that Sachin Tendulkar rarely scored big in matches India won. Even if this is true, shouldn’t one also look at matches (he may have) saved?

All-data-zero-information is as harmful as no-data-all-opinion. Perhaps more so, because data makes everything seem very systematic and scientific, therefore replicable. Before you realise, an observation becomes an empirical law (We call these rules of the thumb).

Thankfully, there are a few first-class case studies that include sufficient details. Unfortunately, they are vastly outnumbered by case-lets that reveal little but damage much.