When a plan goes wrong, who gets the blame?

When I set up in business on my own, back in 1984, I thought I’d generate some controversy in Campaign, then the UK’s foremost advertising and marketing magazine.

What I said was something along the lines of ‘If 90% of new brands fail, and most of those will have been heavily endorsed by consumer research, why don’t we blame the researchers?’

After all, they’re selling reassurance.

I think I’d seen a piece about a mega US company who had sued a research outfit because their research data promised a 5% market share and they failed.

I can remember wading through about a million pounds worth of research that said that Guinness Light was going to be even bigger than sliced bread. And it most definitely wasn’t.

And who got the blame? Not the research companies who had gorged themselves at the Guinness trough.

Going back to the Campaign article, I published and sat back waiting to be damned. I was expecting the full weight of the market research industry to bear down on me like someone squeezed between a team of rhinos facing up to a full-speed Shinkansen.

Not a peep. 

I read quite a lot of stuff these days about researching during the pandemic and how to cope.

My advice? Don’t. Now is the time for people to front up and take decisions based on their experience, their knowledge and the information they’ve already accumulated. Market research is an incredibly blunt instrument.

Why? Because as research shows, it’s wrong nine times out of ten.

If you want to read about a number of un-researched market successes, have a look at www.thatshitwillneversell.com.