In January 2014 I started a blog called “Marketing is Easy“. This was my introduction:
While a consultant at McKinsey I was once told: “You need to either make things very simple or very complex.” Super simple projects sold because the executives understood what was going to be done and the impact seems obvious. Super complex projects sold because the McKinsey team looked like they could handle it and the executive didn’t understand it enough to get his team to do it internally.
As I look at the world today I see a lot of people selling super simple and super complex.
The gurus, most of whom have never run companies, will give you metaphors about Purple Cows and how silver bullets like improving your customer service will make everything better no matter what your current state is.
The other set of consultants will tell you how you need advanced deep learning, big data, personalized predictive, collaborative filtering algorithms to truly get ahead. Thankfully they will sell you the solution so you don’t need to really understand the black box solution.
I call BS on all of it.
Marketing used to be about ‘qualitative BS’. Salesmen like Don Draper would tell stories and convince you they knew better than the finance guy what color should be on the packaging.
More recently, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Now ‘quantitative BSers’ build mathematical models that get you ‘scientific’ answers to all your marketing challenges. Just like the qualitative BSers before them, most of these people really believe that their tools will tell you the true distribution of your customer segments. They are BSing themselves. I should know – I used to be one.
The thesis of this site (and my career) is that when what you care about is having impact what is within your control to get that impact is often easy. The challenges are
(a) Knowing what the easy thing to do is; and
(b) Avoiding chasing random noise
The easy thing can sometimes be answered with quantified data and other times by logic and experience. The key is not to confuse what looks like an easy answer with the random noise that will always threaten to confuse you.
I still believe every word.
What’s changed is that I don’t think the principles are limited just to marketing. My thinking outgrew the name of the blog. It’s not just marketing that is “easy”, it’s “everything”.
Kind of.
What I have internalized over the last few years is that the reasons marketing is made more complex than it needs to be are repeated in many different domains. And solutions have a lot in common too.
Think of this book as compilation of my entire career, but generalized far beyond just marketing – or even business.
The first chapter of the book (which I will send you right now – just enter your email on the right) talks about recruiting and performance management at the world’s top consulting firm (which is pretty business-y), but it also talks about NFL kickers and Teach For America. The second chapter leads off with how loyalty programs work (or don’t work), but then dives into parenting and education in Africa. Later chapters cover science, policing, the medical system, happiness, and even ESP.
And the last chapter? I call it “Living in a Good Enough World”, but an alternative title could have been, “Life is Easy”.