Marketing is a land of pontificators, all advising the breakthrough strategy. Spend time on the Adage 150 and you’ll read about frameworks, tactics, relationship marketing, customer experience, unique selling propositions, positioning, targeting, branding, every flavor of media, word of mouth, and on and on…

I can’t recommend anything–I have little real-world experience, and it’s shortsighted to advocate a specific strategy (e.g., everyone use social media). Regardless, everything out there is still a clusterfuck of evangelism with little research-based evidence.

It’s similar to debates in sports. Basketball enthusiasts, for example, preach every facet of the game. Consider the phrase, “______ wins games.“ I’ve seen the blank replaced with every idea fathomable: coaching, strategy, talent, leadership, clutch, offense, defense, size, speed, etc. Everyone has an argument, and even after decades of evidence, there’s little agreement on how to score more points than the opponent.

So in marketing, like in basketball, there’s plenty of debate over what works and what doesn’t.

But I am not satisfied. If I am building a start-up, I want to know exactly what will convert customers and grow my business. Should I focus on design? Customer experience? Media? Long-term strategy? This is the holy grail of getting shit done, and it’s a far better use of time than on pointless marketing debate (this article withstanding).

For answers, I trust the all-stars–those that have done something of substance, not the social media expert that blogs daily (excluding the omniscient Seth Godin). It’s the cliche folks: Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, David Ogilvy, Tony Hsieh, Philip Knight, Jeff Bezos, etc.

Until I’m at that level, it’s universal skepticism for me. A few of dynamics that I have yet to resolve:

• Strategy vs. Tactics: What is a greater predictor of success–tactics or strategy? I’d like to believe the academics and consultants–that businesses require a solid strategy. But even a great idea takes an absurd amount of luck and hard work, with cumulative advantage (i.e., randomness) playing a huge role. VCs invest in the entrepreneur, not the idea, for a reason.

• Best Practices vs. Focus on you: As a consultant, we breathe best practices. What are the industry leaders doing? Your competitors? How about the market darlings, Apple and Google? Though I like critical research, what worked for Apple is an anomaly–you’d be crazy to benchmark yourself against one of the most successful companies this decade. And your competitors? They’re likely just as inept as you. Seth Godin has a great quote: “[Success] is not by following some expert’s rules or following the herd, but by doing it in the way that works. For you. Don’t worry about someone else’s invented standards for new media, invent your own. Avoid obvious mistakes, don’t follow obvious successes.”

• Customers (i.e., market research) vs. the Creator: Is the source of innovation the customer or the creator? Refer to Henry Ford on market research, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.” Steve Jobs is in the same camp–hates market research. In short, people do not know what they want. Contrast this with the dogma from b-schools and market research conducted in every major corporation.

• Promotion vs. Product: What sells, the product or the advertising? Is ROI higher on a dollar invested into promotion or the product? It’s a classic chicken/egg problem. 20 years ago, I’d bet there would be more agreement that promotion is necessary. But recently, so many Internet start-ups have bootstrapped without any advertising.

• Design vs. Design: I doubt you could find a CEO that thinks design is horse-shit. But what type of “design” is it that everyone loves? Aesthetics (a la Jonathan Ive)? “How it works?” An absurd flash site? The user experience? And consider Zappos, Amazon, or Craiglist–how do they practice design?

I just finished a project that’s pretty exciting: an archive of marketing research called MakeYourCopyLonger.

I made it in response to a quote I read from David Ogilvy, the Father of Advertising (I included it in Charlie Hoehn’s recession-proof grad e-book). Ogilvy:

I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. ‘Suppose,’ I asked, ‘your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition?’ This willful refusal to learn the rudiments of the craft is all too common. I cannot think of any other profession which gets by on such a small corpus of knowledge.

This is the absurdity of marketing, and I believe it’s one of the reasons that we have publications like the Onion mocking the craft (refer to World’s worst person decides to go into marketing). Most marketers, including myself, are Ogilvy’s naive doctor, lacking any knowledge beyond intuition and our personal “creativity.”

Marketing is like any discipline–tactics exist that are time-tested, research-based, and proven. In short, certain techniques will consistently out-perform others.

Think of some techniques in marketing which usually work. How many could you list? Ogilvy, regarding advertising, knew 96. Damn.

Marketing research is over a century old, and a year ago I could not recount a single tactic (and that’s after a degree is business!). Instead of relying on my intuition to create marketing strategies, I’ve decided to take the intellectual route and learn the rudiments of my craft.

My project, titled MakeYourCopyLonger, mirrors what Ogilvy practiced for 35 years, collecting techniques that will hone my craft and more effectively sell ideas. I’ve included many research insights from recent work in behavioral economics, as well as a few from advertising on design. For selfish purposes, I’ll keep it updated for reference when I’m drafting copy or creating a campaign.

And if you know of any facts that I’m missing, feel free to submit it via the link on the left column.

It’s easy to sort my email/mail. The unimportant marketing stuff looks the same. The funny thing is that I’m completely aware of this, but I still follow the crowd when writing copy and designing creative.

Discuss.

An Apple store employee told me to how sell the iPhone with a great success rate. His words:

—

Man walks into Apple Store.

Man: I’m thinking about getting an iPhone. But I’m not sure.

Apple Employee: Let’s walk over to the phones.

Man: So how does the iPhone work?

Apple Employee: Here. Try it out.

Man: But I don’t know how to use it. I have no idea how to even make a call!

Apple Employee: How do you suppose you make a call?

Man: Oh. I guess it’s this button here…and then I guess I just type the numbers here…

Time passes. Man stumbles upon 50% of phone functionality. Employee has not touched phone once.

—

This may not seem breathtaking, but compare this to my experience in the Sprint store, when I purchased a Palm Pre.

—

Me: I’d like to check out the Palm Pre.

Sprint Employee: Let me get the demo Pre…here it is.

Me: How does it work?

Sprint Employee: [Employee holding Pre] Well you swipe this way to move between programs. And this button brings up the menu…[5 minutes later]…

—

This is the absurdity of teaching a technology via traditional, lecturing techniques. The best way for someone to understand a technology is to experience it themselves (UX experts, hopefully we’re all nodding in agreement). Apple has figured this out and Sprint is in the dark ages. Poor Palm.

But more importantly, it illustrates the power of exploiting cognitive biases. I’ve written quite a bit about biases recently, and Apple employs a very important one: the endowment effect. It says that people value something more when they possess it. Here’s the bias in practice:

• Group 1: shown an assortment of random, trinket objects: rubber bands, paper clips, beer cozy, post-it notes, etc. They were asked to value each object–all were roughly valued the same.
• Group 2: shown the same objects, but were told that they could keep the beer cozy after the experiment. The value of the cozy doubled for these respondents. [academic source]

Car salesman are aware the endowment effect–that’s why they let you test-drive the car. As soon as your hands touch the steering wheel, the endowment effect owns. Your perceived value of the car and the salesman’s close-rate increases. In short, sales are difficult when products are behind a glass case (marketing experts, hopefully we’re all nodding in agreement).

Something to think about: are there any other instances of salesman using psychological maneuvers on customers?