Marketing is Not Multiple Choice

Something to Think About

Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK gave a podcast interview titled “What Most People Miss About Marketing” on Lenny’s Podcast.??

Rory’s understanding of the intersection of marketing and human psychology is FASCINATING.

Lenny even asked him about a twist on the saying from Oscar Wilde that “Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.” Rory’s version was something like “Seriousness is the worst thing about marketing.” He posited that winning as a brand was when a stand up comedian could do a bit about you.

And I like that.?

Because life’s too short; we like brands that make us laugh, chuckle, and feel human.

"How To"

Carilu Dietrich produces an outstanding newsletter.

In her recent edition, she broke down two case studies where marketers mapped their entire universe of buyers. This got my ABM interest piqued!

Check it out for an easy to read case study double-header that contains principles that apply when you’re considering the precise size and makeup of your universe of potential customers.

A Marketing Deep Dive

Marketing is not multiple choice.

Have you ever taken a survey? (Of course you have.)

How about one where you thought… my truthful answer is not one of the available options?

That drives me nuts!

Having no place to include your true answer creates a new kind of question.

Poorly crafted surveys are definitely a pet peeve for me.

And I’ve seen a bunch.

The mistake is simultaneously trying to

Solicit true opinions

Lead those opinions by the survey writer’s own biases and assumptions.

Here’s the technical take.

In survey lingo if an answer is required, but no option is given for “neutral” or “other” that’s called a “forced-choice” or “forced-response” question.

Some researchers intentionally use forced-choice to combat ambivalence.

The idea is that if you need respondents to be positional, forcing the choice will yield relevant data even if it’s not precise.

For example, “Are you more likely to vote Republican or Democrat?” In the aggregate, researchers may not care if you would actually vote Independent, Libertarian, or Green Party, they just want to know if your sentiments or values align more with one major party or the other.

But that logic fails when the survey taker has a true and meaningful answer and you haven’t taken it into account... and it's something germane to the intent of the survey.

For example let's say we had the question, “Which make of car do you drive?”

And possible choices were “Toyota, Hyundai, GM, Dodge, or Nissan.”

Forcing that question when respondents may drive a Ford, Mercedes, or Tesla undermines the research.

Another example, perhaps more relevant to marketers, is the “How did you hear about us?” field on website forms. (These should always include free form text.)

A discrete set of answers makes data analysis easier.

Which increases the temptation to list the options you can think of without accounting for what you can’t.

It's not a leap to conclude that if the only way to complete a survey is to provide an answer that is false, the conclusions drawn from the data will be unreliable.

Multiple choice tests are similar.

They don’t usually present you with multiple correct answers.

Constructed with only one correct answer and three or more incorrect answers, there is no room for answers outside those provided, no matter how relevant or true they may be.

Both of these examples foster Alternative Blindness, which is a cognitive bias where we tend to think the options presented are the only ones.

It’s the proverbial box we’re all trying to think outside.

Rory Sutherland makes the case that approaching marketing like a multiple choice test leads to bad conclusions.

We miss what we really need to know.?

Oh, we’re trying to get the right answer, but just like a bad survey, the way we frame the question has already led us astray.?

The real world is just not that tidy.

All, none, or some of the answers might be right.

And our preconceptions are nudge us to see the problem as finding the right answer instead of choosing between multiple right answers.?

I like Annie Duke’s method from How to Decide, which encourages the elimination of impossibilities first.?

We narrow down a set of correct answers instead of limiting ourselves to one.?

We can sort the remaining choices based on easy-to-evaluate criteria like cost, past experience, likelihood that our ICP can be found using that channel, etc.

(I break down a method for approaching this question in my mini-course, the 2-Day Marketing MBA.)

Breaking out of multiple choice thinking can be freeing.?

More importantly increases your likelihood of uncovering the truth.

That is accurate information about your customer, their pain, and where to find them.

Namaste.

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Chad Jardine, CEO

CMO Zen

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AI notice: This newsletter is human-written. Images however may be AI-generated.