Opinion

Ask the experts: What has marketing science taught you?

We asked the authors of Eat Your Greens: Fact Based Thinking To Improve Your Brand's Health what marketing sciences have taught them in a sentence (or less). Here’s what they said.

Rory Sutherland

Humility.

Byron Sharp

Changing my own mind can be immensely satisfying.

Sharp: ‘Changing my own mind can be immensely satisfying’

Sue Unerman

To argue.

Tess Alps

Why facts alone won’t win an argument (even though they should).

Bob Hoffman

How little science there is in marketing.

Mark Ritson

How much marketing is involved in science.

Mark Earls

Humans.

Tom Goodwin

How uncertain the science in marketing is. We think we can explain rationally and objectively more than we can. When we further our knowledge into it, we will know more clearly what we won’t ever know.

Kate Richardson

The art of scepticism.

Richardson: The art of scepticism

Ryan Wallman

That most marketers prefer platitudes over pragmatism.

Kate Waters

It’s easier to win an argument when you have an evidence base. 

Phil Graves

That if you want to improve any aspect of marketing you need to understand how consumers think.

Julian Cole

A number of different ways to sell the shit out of great creative work!

Doc Searls

Nothing. I also doubt that any “science” with a Wikipedia entry as short as marketing science’s has much to teach that isn’t about a wannabe field bullshitting itself.

Adam Ferrier

In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

Ferrier: ‘In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king’

Rosie Yakob

That binary thinking rarely serves me well.

Eaon Pritchard

To maintain an open mind, but keep the bullshit detector running.

Helen Edwards

The importance of defining terms – starting with what we mean by ‘science’.

Phil Barden

More in five years than my previous 25 years of marketing practice.

Robert van Ossenbruggen

Relying on common sense will get you in trouble. 

Wiemer Snijders

Many companies are still leaving a lot of money on the table.

Patricia McDonald

To be sceptical but never cynical. 

Tom Fishburne

To question the wisdom of inherited wisdom.

Brandon Towl

That what is interesting is not always what is important… and vice versa.”

Amy Wilson

To be cautious of intuition.

Faris Yakob

To be experimental. 

Mark Barden

To get back to basics and not get distracted by the new fangled nonsense.

Gareth Price

To start with the evidence and look for findings that replicate.

Jerry Daykin

That if want to be really good at something, it helps to understand the rules of the game that you are playing. But more than that, that understanding those rules actually allows you to be creative and to enrich things, rather than being limited.

Becky McOwen-Banks

That the numbers aren’t the end of the story but the start.

Anjali Ramachandran

Marketing Science has taught me that real impact is not just numbers, it is creating actual change – whether that is at local, national or global level – for real humans, not just for brands.

Hear from the the managing editor of Eat Your Greens: Fact Based Thinking To Improve Your Brand’s Health, Wiemer Snijders, at MSIX on November 9th in Sydney. Wiemer will be disclosing the top seven insights the book has to offer.

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