Why measurement mania kills creative marketing content, and why non-sense makes more sense to differentiate your products and your brand

Too many marketers rely too much on metrics and logical, rational thinking, at the expense of the mercurial genius of emotional, irrational stimuli. The result: a multitude of me-too marketing campaigns and content that do the opposite of their intended purpose. They resemble each other instead of differentiating your products and your brand. Here’s why, and what you can do about it.

I’ve worked in B2B tech marketing for the last few years. It has been a real education, and a great challenge for a right-brained bloke like me to work in a predominantly left-brained environment. Having a PhD in English Literature means I appreciate the quicksilver of artistic inspiration that often defies rationality. The problem is that this doesn’t often fly in the logical world of technology, coding, software and analytics. Consequently, it becomes bloody hard to persuade people in this world to do something different, something counter-intuitive, or just plain nuts, because they want metrics to prove everything. Instead, they become slaves to ROI, KPIs, SEO, PPC and other such inelegant acronyms.

Nevertheless, I’ve never relinquished my nagging suspicion that great marketing, and great marketing content, defies all this measurement, because it’s just as much of an art, as it is a science.  At times, I’ve even come to loggerheads with tech marketing leaders about this, but I can’t simply discard my principles. I’ve always felt that trying to accurately measure effectiveness of some content and campaigns is like trying to catch water in a net, but at times I’ve felt like a lonely swimmer against the tide. Until now.

I’ve just discovered a powerful ally. I recommend you read his work and watch his talks online. They might change what you want and expect from marketing and content. They explain why you should be more open-minded about it, and why you should do more than just rely on metrics to create your campaigns. Here’s a bit about him.

Alchemy: the magic of original thinking

My new ally is Rory Sutherland, and his thought-provoking book, Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense.

Now, Rory’s a man who knows what he’s talking about. He’s the UK Vice Chairman of the global advertising powerhouse Ogilvy. During his career he has been President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). He’s been in the advertising game since 1988 (bloody ages, in other words), and most importantly, he’s the founding father of Ogilvy Change, his agency’s behavioural science practice, which investigates and applies principles from cognitive psychology, social psychology to marketing and advertising.

I’m not going to go into great detail here about what he says. You can read the book to find out. Trust me, it’s really engaging, entertaining, intellectually robust and persuasive. Plus, this is meant to be just a blog. My purpose here is to introduce him to you and encourage you, in the words of Apple’s legendary advertising campaign, to “Think Different.”

Understanding alchemy

Wikipedia nicely sums up what Sutherland highlights in Alchemy, that great marketing ideas are often built around a core that is profoundly irrational.

He argues that we behave in ways that are both logical and what he calls psycho-logical, rational and irrational. Some of the things that we do, say and decide are the result of conscious and clear decision-making process, based on the premise of experience, knowledge and understanding that can be plotted and measured in a straight line from cause to effect. This plays to what I’ll crudely call, scientific, or logical thinking: X causes Y, so we should do Z to amplify and expedite X. It’s tidy, and it’s measurable.

However, Sutherland says that many of our actions and decisions are governed by unconscious responses and anticipations. A lot of the choices we make don’t result from what we think but what we feel. These responses aren’t logical or rational. They are driven by what we might identify as gut instinct, or reflexes that are so innate or natural that we aren’t even consciously aware of them. In these cases, it’s not always easy or possible to identify a clear line from cause to effect. Instead, it’s a kind of magic, or alchemy.

So, why this is important for content and marketing? It’s important for two reasons. Widening differentiation and increasing engagement.

Alchemy widens differentiation

Firstly, it opens up the possibility of doing things differently. Organisations find logic and measurement very comforting. CMOs can justify their activity and budgets to the rest of the C-suite by showing that their choices work, based on metrics gleaned from what’s happening or what’s previously happened. The problem with this is that measurement is, by its nature, retrospective and logical. It examines what’s gone before and extrapolates from that what will work again, so the default response to it is to follow what it identifies as successful. In short, this means replicating good campaigns and doing more of the same. That’s fine, but it most likely means you’ll follow best practice, and best practice means doing nothing new or provocative. It’s conservative. It neglects or suppresses innovation and imagination in marketing, advertising and communications, and it risks leading to dull, uninspired campaigns that lack differentiation.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat in meetings and people have said, “Let’s see what our competitors are doing, so we can do them better.” And I’ve thought to myself, “I don’t care how they do things. Our identity and how customers feel about us should come from how we want them to feel and think, and our unique voice and standpoint.” My gut feeling has always been that if you spend too much energy identifying and aping what your competitors do well, you’ll simply sound, look and feel just like them. And what’s the point in that? You end up as one of an undifferentiated mass of options that the customer has, making their choice more difficult. 

Surely, if you do something different, counter-intuitive or even plain bonkers, they’ll at least sit up and take notice, and they might just say, “Hey, these guys are doing something interesting,” even if that something is more costly, or functionally more limited than competitors. Sutherland himself contends that history is littered with great products and services that died a death because they didn’t stand out. Similarly, there are other things that should never have got out of the starting blocks, but for illogical or irrational reasons, they did, and do.

One example he uses is the automobile. He says that initially, it was a hugely costly, quite mad innovation that was barely more powerful than the horses it sought to supplant. It was complicated to maintain and functionally its advantages were small to none. Logically and rationally, there was little to recommend it. Yet it was a mark of status, both in terms of wealth and in terms of being ahead of the pack, that led to its early adoption. Only once Henry Ford got his head around his revolutionary manufacturing techniques, did the product become better, simpler and cheaper, thereby spearheading the success of what could so easily have been a white elephant.

Magic increases engagement opportunities

Secondly, if we’re too logical, we’re missing a lot of potent opportunities to communicate, engage and connect with audiences in more meaningful and impactful ways. Ironically, this stands to reason. And by embracing alchemy, magic, ineffable qualities, call them what you will, you’re tapping into a huge reservoir of possibilities that are neither obvious to the naked eye nor highlighted by logical analysis.

Sutherland uses numerous examples to illustrate his point, most of which focus on how things make people feel rather than what they do or whether they are cost-effective or efficient. Functionality and cost are persuasive considerations, for sure, but they aren’t everything. On the face of it, a highly portable multi-functional tool like a Swiss Army knife is a perfect proposition, and it’s certainly useful, but it doesn’t supplant individual single function tools that either do specific jobs better, or make customers think they do them better. 

To raise an example of my own, what’s better: an Apple Watch or a 1968 Paul Newman Rolex Daytona? The former is a modern multifunctional technological marvel. 

The latter was in its time, but compared to the Apple Watch it’s prehistoric. It’s probably less accurate and has far less functionality than Apple’s offering. Yet it’s a highly desirable piece.

People are prepared to spend eye-watering amounts to own one. In fact, its value continues to rise. It’s a symbol of status, of success. It makes a statement to others and makes the owner feel different to their peers. That’s far from logical, and far from rational, but it’s a fact nonetheless.

Another consideration is reassurance. Sutherland gives examples of how changing the framing or experience of a product or service can alter customer perception. For instance, Transport for London (TfL) improved how commuters feel about using the London Underground not by making trains faster, cleaner or more frequent, but by installing digitized information boards at stations that tell commuters how long before the next train arrives. 

The trains don’t arrive any quicker. They aren’t any better. But TfL got rid of customer uncertainty. Sutherland says waiting four minutes without knowing when the next train will come causes more dissatisfaction than knowing you have an eight-minute wait. Extraordinary, isn’t it? But it’s the way people feel that matters. To Hell with the logic.

So, what should marketers and content creators do about this?

On the face of it, it’s quite simple, although it’s much more difficult in practice. And it’s this: Be less logical. Be more psycho-logical. Take more risks. Go nuts.

If you want to create content and marketing campaigns that really stand out, take your head out of the spreadsheets and the metrics and let your gut do the talking. It’s much tougher to rationalize than best-practice <yawn> and it’s a shit-load more random. There’s a lot of trial and a ton of error involved, but if you get it right from time to time, your product and your brand just might set the world on fire.

A little caveat

As you can tell, I’m quite excited by reading Alchemy, because it resonated strongly with me, and really articulated how I feel about this subject. Like Sutherland, I recognize that metrics and measurement, logical and scientific approaches to our disciplines, are significant and necessary parts of what we do, but I simply want to stress that they shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all of the thinking behind every bit of marketing and advertising. Alchemy and magic are qualities that are too valuable to ignore.

I hope I have done justice to Sutherland’s book and his line of argument. That has been my intention. Don’t take my word for it. Get yourself a copy of Alchemy and decide for yourself.

Thanks

Adam

PS. I have no personal or professional links to Rory Sutherland, his publishers or to Ogilvy. My blog post is merely the ramblings of a fanboy.