Calling all chemists

My favourite subject at school was chemistry. There was something magical about the way sodium would combust loudly when dropped into water or the way one more drop of acid would make the bright purple of potassium permanganate disappear.

There are quite a few ‘Chemists’ who’ve found their way into marketing and my post-rationalised hypothesis is that it plays to our passion for experiments.

“An experiment is a procedure carried out to support, refute, or validate a hypothesis. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated.”

There are some stonkingly attractive words in the definition above – hypothesis, insight, manipulated, cause and effect and validate – so perhaps it was no surprise that when marketing was explained to me as the task of working out how to better connect a business with its customers, all I heard was ‘you can get paid for running experiments? Count me in!’

And did I say that my second favourite subject was biology? The elements in marketing involve living organisms. Two sets of them. One inside the business and the other on the outside. Two huge chunks of variables to experiment with. Still makes me giddy just thinking about it!

If chemistry has its periodic table and equations, marketing has developed its disciplines and best practices. And, as the science that gave us plastic now needs to find a way we can reverse the process, so many of the disciplines of marketing are being refuted and challenged with fresh hypotheses on the best ways to connect a business with its customers.

With growth for many brands becoming more elusive while for others an opportunity not to be missed, it’s perhaps no surprise that we have seen an upsurge in hypotheses on how to achieve it from brands, consultancies and agencies. Brands that can develop and explore these hypotheses with the creative mindset of a Chemist maybe (my hypothesis), identifying which might be supported, refuted or ideally validated, will be the ones that succeed. 

In science, a hypothesis first needs to be written in what they term as ‘a testable form’. The top tip is to write it as an ‘if-then’ statement. If you take an action, then this outcome is expected. Secondly, the experiment needs to be repeatable so the data can be gathered to a statistically valid level. For example, ‘If students attend all their lectures, then they will achieve higher grades’.

The reason this is a testable hypothesis is because you have clearly identified your independent and dependent variables. The independent variable is the one you are controlling or changing - in this case attendance levels - and you then measure its effect on the dependent variable; the outcome you are looking to achieve - in this case higher grades. This is a very repeatable test and one that could be run by several universities at the same time to help gather the level of data required. 

In business, ‘Growth’ is our dependent variable and the successful businesses are the ones that have some mastery over the many independent variables in play at any one time, which is why its not easy. A marketing ecosystem is one such independent variable that ebbs and flows from feeling under control to everything needs changing, and currently we seem to be more at the changing end of things. This has got us thinking. 

As a result we have developed a hypothesis, touched on earlier in the piece, that we’d love to hear your thoughts on and how we might validate it:

‘If you can approach marketing challenges with a creative mindset, then you will better connect your business to its customers’.

We like the idea that we should view this collective creative mindset across the marketing ecosystem as some sort of asset. Something that we can attribute a value to, an active ingredient, like our friend potassium permanganate, that we can vary the quantity of to affect different outcomes. We’re calling it Creative Capital, and we believe it’s the most valuable asset a business needs today. 

This then is our independent variable in our hypothesis, but how might we quantify it? Is it a cultural or leadership or capability thing? A combination of several key variables rolled up into a neat equation like an E=MC2? It does feel that it needs to be to the power of something doesn’t it?

 Any chemists out there?