Kevin Clancy
Fast Company magazine, the self-proclaimed chronicle of cutting-edge business practices, not too long ago proclaimed that "Acting on Intuition" was the #1 trend that "will affect the way we work and live." The magazine’s report on intuition read as if following it in a business situation was somehow new—as if the problem with business is really that people have been relying too heavily on research and logical decision-making processes and not paying enough attention to what that little voice inside their head was telling them to do. We shook our heads then, but a few weeks later, after yet another CEO told our firm Copernicus Marketing Consulting how much she felt inspired by the ideas espoused in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, which continues to occupy a top spot on the best-seller list with millions of copies now in print, we decided enough is enough. We have to write a response.
The result is Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head: How Disciplined, Fact-Based Marketing Will Lead to Extraordinary Growth and Profits.
Peter Krieg
Let’s face it, the field of marketing has been a late bloomer when it comes to conforming to the analytic, fact-based approach to decision-making that is THE standard practice in virtually every other critical strategic business function—from finance to IT to operations. The excuses that worked even just a few years ago—we can’t really measure the impact of advertising on sales, we don’t have any way to know which kind of marketing program will impact our customer lifetime value more, the sleeper and subliminal effects of this campaign can’t be quantified, and on and on—just don’t fly with CEOs and CFOs anymore. Marketing is increasingly held to the same standards of accountability today that all other functional areas are, so, marketers, put down that copy of Blink!
Intuition and judgment certainly have their place in marketing, as they do in any other business decision area. But programs that return 20% or more on investment come from carefully balancing the emotional gut with the grounded head. Your Gut Is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head paves the way for anyone in business—Fortune 500 CMO, mid-cap company CEO, or small business owner alike—to make better, more profitable marketing decisions.
