Years ago I not-so-famously quipped that a “customer journey
is a journey no customer ever takes.”
For the past two days I’ve been in meetings that have made
my offhanded remark, I must admit, seem more and more brilliant.
Half the meetings talk about advertising as if it were an
if-then proposition. If we do something, then a predictable something will
happen. This is advertising, not Newtonian physics. There are plenty of
immovable objects (potential customers) but not so many irresistible forces
(creative.)
The other half of these excruciating sessions have been
about calculus. Someone has done all the math and now knows how to optimize
angels dancing on the heads of various pins.
As George Parker so often and so lustily points out, Mad Men
have been replaced by Math Men.
I guess what’s happening is similar to what happened to the
French when they fought and lost in Viet Nam. They tried to apply military
science as taught by the finest academies and practiced by the most be-medaled
generals to a people’s war. Surely if the North Viet Namese fought in the style
the French had always fought wars, the French army would have mopped the jungle
with them.
Consumers are free agents.
They don’t respond magically because you’ve placed a “click
here” button adroitly or culled the list of fields you’d like them to fill out
to seven.
This is a business, as Dr. Samuel Johnson said so many
centuries ago, whose soul is built on making a large promise to consumers.
It’s not built on math.
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