The marketer's dilemma - Caught between the butterfly and the typhoon
Tracing the journey of a marketer on their journey through the "Unknowable chasm"
They say that a butterfly flaps its wings and causes typhoons.
As a marketer, you alter one element in your input and boom.
Or bust.
And often, we do not know what caused this typhoon.
Mostly because marketing is non-linear. And chaotic.
The result - “repeatability of success” is a problem.
How do you trust a function that can’t predict its own success rate?
And tell me which other tribe revels in celebrating a high degree of variance between inputs and outcome.
I call this the “unknowable chasm”.
No wonder that everyone thinks everyone knows marketing.
But as an ambitious marketer, this does not stop you.
So you resolve to do something about this.
Stage 1
You try to spot a correlation between when the butterfly flaps its wings (input) and the magnitude of the typhoon (output).
Mr. Pearson is your new BFF.
But then you realize that there could be a “third factor” that might be impacting this output.
So, you move on.
Stage 2
Now you introduce sophistication. Predictive models.
And now, you feel like The God.
You input the formula (what you believe are the rules) for the model and it spews out a neat relationship between inputs and outcome.
You feel better because now you see numbers.
Relationships.
And correlation coefficients.
But the model throws out a high error rate. Ouch.
Even this model could not fully represent the real relationship between input and output.
The “unknowable chasm” persists.
Months pass by. This conflict gnaws at you and begs you for attention.
Stage 3
You have gotten better.
So you introduce Machine learning.
This is a new world where the machine sucks in data from you while you go back to thinking about how Instagram Reels is a sub-par Tik Tok clone.
The basic idea of this model is that you do not influence the outcome in any way (de-bias) and stay detached from it. The model in turn spews out the rules that define the relationship between inputs and output.
Whoa!
This feels definitive because machines are smarter.
Plus you see more data. More complex relationships.
You think this is DEFINITELY IT.
You now believe that you really do know what caused the typhoon.
But you are wrong. You realize that Stage 4 is just around the corner.
As you’ll realize, this is an infinite loop. You soon grow wise enough to recognize the limitations of being led solely by data and perhaps not as smart as you’d hoped you’d be at the beginning of this journey.
As a Marketer, the point on 'machines' made me drift and think about the greatest machine in existence - the human mind. Go and little deeper and you stumble upon something called the 'sub-conscious mind'. Could another factor be good old fashioned 'gut feeling'? Input = Years of experience & Output = a nagging feeling that tells you this idea is going to turn into a typhoon.