The dinosaur’s thumb

An archaeologist would probably be able to tell you a dinosaur’s dietary preferences by studying its fossilised thumb, but do we really believe we can profile a live person by a single purchase? Are brands that strong that their purchase decides your personality? What many people does the manager average to create his ‘typical buyer’? Why are we so sure that being able to describe every detail about the ‘typical buyer’ will open the lock to untold riches?

Has anyone researched the gaps between marketers’ pictures of their market and reality? I strongly suspect it’d make revealing, if not amusing, reading.

What will you do if you know?

Will you build a factory if you didn’t know what you’ll make in it?

Or open a shop without deciding what to sell?

Or employ an executive without a defined job profile?

Yet it is routine to find marketers who want to launch a loyalty programme with nothing more than the vaguest aims about loyalty, repeat purchase and data collection. Can they not put down a simple wish-list? Wonder how the rest of their marketing runs.

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.

What happens to the contest SMS

We often wonder what TV programmes do with the literally hundreds of thousands of SMSs they get in response to their inane contests.

Do they call a random sample of senders to research what sort of people watch the show and what do they like in it?

Do they pass on such research as profiles of the show’s audience to advertisers? (Can the SMS senders be called representative of the show’s audience?)

Do advertisers hand the unsuspecting SMS senders’ numbers to tele-callers as ‘leads’? Why does every programme have a contest?

Can someone help us with these questions?

Kill the pilot

Your boss wants you to find out if direct marketing will work. You call five agencies. Order them to present. Tell them nothing else. They ask nothing, so it’s not all your fault. The most desperate one comes with speculative creative. Which you put on a presentation and show your boss. He nods. They have the job.

You start haggling. They agree to slave rates. Once the relationship is established… the whore will become the wife.

You’ll run a pilot, on profit-sharing basis. Even as your company pays a multinational consultant millions for advice you’ll never use. They must, if they believe that direct marketing can produce results, share the risk. Never mind your share, as a fraction of your marketing spend, is a tiny fraction of their share, as a fraction of their turnover.

The pilot ‘fails’. The agency insists it’ll succeed if it’s scaled up. You know better. Direct marketing cannot work for your industry. Why leave it at that? No, let’s go a step further. Direct marketing doesn’t work in India. Because nobody reads.

If only the couples of this country piloted sex as marketers pilot direct marketing, our population would have been a tiny fraction of what it is today.

How do you measure loyalty?

Humm…

How do measure love? Or hate? Or interest? Or indifference? Perhaps psychologists can. Maybe they can measure loyalty too. But can brand-building business executives make sense of their methods and measures?

More to the point, who is loyal customer? In an ad agency, he can be very different persons to the account executive (trusts me, asks me, doesn’t order me, wants ideas and second opinions) and, say, the account manager (lets me raise bills), not to mention the accountant (pays bills, on time). Such differences are bound to exist in every company and industry. When you talk about ‘the loyal customer’, are you sure that everyone who needs to understand understands, more or less, the same thing?

Also, why do you want to measure loyalty? Because the past will show the future? Does it? Will it? In your company, in your business? Do you want to know how many will respond to your next marketing scheme? Or who should you be extra nice to? Or who’ll form the 20 of your 80:20 four years from now?

Do you really run your business so systematically that you can obtain, leave along use, information of that nature? Can anyone? An astronomer may be able to predict how the heavens will behave a million years from now? But ask him to do it for a business, and he’ll almost certainly recommend you see an astrologer instead.

We are not, of course, saying something as stupid as ‘Burn your plans,’ merely suggesting that the plans may have to depend more on observations, experience and ambition than on numbers. Perhaps they always do, and numbers are only put down to distract busybodies.

Finally, why do you believe that the data you have can predict loyalty?

Let’s say we define loyalty as ‘probability to dine again’ for a restaurant. We’d know the courses ordered the number of dinner companions, the time and date, the waiters, the special instructions, and what not.

But would we know the tip? What if it’s paid in cash (tips are taxable income) and the restaurant doesn’t have a system of recording and splitting tips? ‘Tip’ is supposed to be an abbreviation for 'to insure promptness'. When would the diner want this promptness? On a future dinner, obviously. So a good tip not only says, “Thank you,” it also says, “Keep it up, because I’ll need you again.” Isn’t it possible that the unrecorded tip would prove to be a better predictor than everything that is so carefully measured?

We should stop measuring then? Or wait till we have discovered that universal applicable and universally understandable clear measure? That’ll be like stopping breathing till we realise the meaning of life, wouldn’t it?

All we are suggesting is that debate and discussion be not always equated with intellectual masturbation. By that yardstick, let's-do-it measuring is numerical rape.

(In The Ultimate Question Fred Reichheld announces that the Net Promoters is this measure. Please see www.ultimatequestion.com for an introduction. And do let us know what you think. Mr Reichheld is the greatest guru on loyalty. Yet, it’d perhaps not be a sin to debate about him.)

“Let’s compare and we’ll know.”

We often hear executives say that we only need look at the figures and we’d know which way to go.

What they do is dangerous, destructive and frankly disgusting. Without the slightest thought on what those figures mean or how they came into being; without any idea of what is significant and what’s not; without any questions as to if there were easy, commonsense explanations for variations, they rush to judge, theorise, and change.

Which doesn’t matter for them, because nobody is going to check the final figures.

It can, however, devastate the people on the job, unless they switch off their brains and accept orders like zombies.

We beg them to read a basic book on statistics. Even popular math books will do. It’s heartening to observe the popularity of books like Freakonomics and Undercover Economist, and the availability of excellent textbooks in low-priced Indian Sub-continent editions.

One hopes one will soon see their effect.

And that the next big thing will be translation. For many Indians, English remains a difficult language. We feel deeply ashamed about it, but do nothing about it. The more intelligent races translate each other’s works and get on with their lives.

“Have you done market research?…

Really?

First, if you wanted market research, why are you asking me? I (the singular, in our case, embraces the plural, unless stated otherwise) am not the market, nor a market researcher. You wanted my opinion, didn’t you? And are very angry it doesn’t match with yours.

Second, what makes you think every question can be answered by market research? The buried need must be dug out by ceaseless observation, interspersed with flashes of inspiration, when things ‘sort of connect’. That’s called insight, I suppose. I wonder if any but the best market researcher can contribute to insight.

Even if you were to have a team of master market researchers at your side, would they be able to eliminate risk?

Third, did you do market research? If you did, was there any special reason for not showing it to me.

I wish, for business’s sake, executives learnt to take disagreement better.

Relationship

Everyone wants to enter relationships. Your phone, your car, and your jeans.

Only you won’t to play.

In ancient days, you’d have a nodding acquaintance with the ne'er-do-well who ran the phone booth, were friendly with your neighbourhood mechanic, and regarded your tailor as a true artist.

Those good old days won’t come back. And, honestly, you don’t miss them much. Those ‘relationships’ were quite unimportant to you.

This would be perfectly obvious to any child. Yet CRM gurus refuse to see it. They keep insisting that lonely humanity must now bond with the plastic card. One wonders why.

PS: What would you say to a person of the opposite sex who offered you a relationship even before getting properly acquainted?

The other

A few days ago we bought a satellite TV connection. After the installation was completed we were asked to fill in a profile form, so that we may get offers from brands.

Noble intentions. Except that the options to this question gave away the chances of any real good:
Q. Which of the following do you own?
A. [] Plasma TV [] Four-wheeler [] Washing machine [] Microwave… [] Others

Others! How on earth do we own that? Data collected so idiotically can only translate into one thing. Garbage.

The tragedy is that this is typical, not atypical, of how things are done in our country.