Marketing isn’t Rocket Science

“So, what does that mean?”

The young woman sitting next to me leaned in. She seemed genuinely curious as she peered at me from underneath her summer hat, but, of course, men have been known to misinterpret women quite consistently throughout history.

“Huh?”, I eloquently replied, not taking any chances. Her inquiry struck me as odd.

“Being a marketer. What does that mean, really?”

It was actually a very good question. What does it mean to be a marketer, really? A lot of us struggle to define what we are and what we do. Few these days are merely marketers. As if ashamed, we label ourselves through euphemisms that few outside of our profession — and, let’s be honest, few within— understand.

In a way, it’s not all too surprising. Many marketers face daily uphill battles to be taken seriously by the corporate surrounding in which they do their work. Albeit immensely important to the overall success of a company, marketing is often considered the coloring-in department. Our colleagues have an idea of what marketing is, though they would likely struggle to pinpoint what makes it different from, say, advertising. And at the end of the day, it’s marketing. Not rocket science.

In an effort to be considered a proper business function, we try to prove our worth. If we can measure results, we can justify our existence. But the uncomfortable truth is that marketing suffers from such a repeatability issue that measurement can become a dangerous if not a borderline pointless exercise. A recent academic analysis found that not only are replication studies of marketing research exceedingly few and far between, out of the studies that were, as low as 15% confirmed previous findings. And yet we use the same findings to create policy.

Marketing ultimately involves humans and, as such, has to deal with an endless array of contextual factors that are impossible to correlate, compare or predict. As a result, we often measure what we can over what we should, what is urgent over what is important. To prove our worth and justify our existence.

Short-term metrics are more precise than long-term ones, so we favor them even if they lead to numerous false conclusions about marketing effectiveness. In research by Les Binet and Peter Field, very large market share effects were found in only 3% of analysed short-term cases. For cases exceeding 30 months, it was 38%. Short term-focused activities also often target consumers with established affiliations to the brand and imminent purchase intentions at the cost of brand growth, long-term base sales and margins. Unsurprisingly, long-term cases (6 months or more) drove a whopping 460% more market share growth than short-term cases did.

Meanwhile, to inform our decisions, we use econometrics that, as a recent paper by Ehrenberg-Bass shows, shouldn’t really be used to estimate valid and reliable forecasting models unless based on extensive experimental data on important variables, across varied conditions. The effects of advertising, particularly on sales, are incredibly difficult to isolate and predict. Campaigns never exist in a vacuum. They are affected by numerous additional influences such as prices, promotions, distribution, competitor responses and economic conditions. The list goes on.

If marketing is ever going to be taken seriously, we have to stop denying reality and come to terms with the fact that the outcome of what we do is partly down to factors outside of our control. We can improve our chances of success by ensuring that we know our fundamentals, employ a strategy-first approach and measure, with full insight into the strengths and weaknesses of our models, what is relevant to the best of our abilities. But make no mistake — marketing will never be an exact science.

However, don’t for a second think that makes being a marketer something to be ashamed about. Rather, it’s a truth we should use as a badge of honor. As the Nobel prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann once said, imagine how difficult physics would be if particles could think. That’s the reality we marketers deal with. It’s not rocket science. It’s a lot harder than that.

“So?”, she said. “Being a marketer. What does that mean, really?”

I smiled.

“I make people buy stuff.”

“How?”

“It’s complicated.”