By: Frank S. Washington

It’s no secret that big companies often don’t do well when making overtures to small businesses. In many instances, their outreach efforts fail not because big businesses don’t have anything worthwhile to offer but because major marketers aren’t very good at holding the attention of small entrepreneurs.

But a recent, award-winning campaign by Verizon did indeed capture the fancy of many small businesses — and earned some notice from the big boys, too, for both its effectiveness and its simplicity.

In fall 2006, the telecom giant began sending out a test mailing of direct mail pieces that bore a striking resemblance to an all-too-familiar office-supply staple — the interoffice envelope. Verizon targeted 11,851 small businesses with the envelopes, which featured the words “INTERNET NOTICE” stripped across the top and the crossed-out names of fictitious previous recipients. A final “name” — “Cable User” — was unobscured, a cue for business owners to “cross out” their cable provider and switch to a high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL) provided by Verizon.

The envelope was accompanied by a cover letter — with the heading “For Speed, For Features, For Price … Verizon Business DSL” — that was signed by Verizon small business marketing director Marquita Carter.

In an interview, Carter explains that Verizon officials settled on the three-month “Interoffice Envelope” campaign after tests suggested its simple familiarity stood a strong chance of cutting through the promotional clutter that confronts many small businesses.

“The iconic look of an interoffice envelope — who’s going to just toss that out?” asks Carter rhetorically. “We tested this approach and got some really strong results. It bettered our control number by 30 percent.”

Carter says a test is part of every direct mail campaign at Verizon. The company sends out two or more different pieces of direct mail and measures which one generates the most calls and conversions to sales. The responses are benchmarked against the control campaign, which is the best campaign from the last direct mail cycle.

“How do we continue to work on sustainability from the heart?”— Greg Owsley

“Nobody’s hired us saying, ‘You’re the green designer, that’s why we want you.’”— Edith Graves

By Elaine Appleton Grant

In the months since Deliver® published its first green issue, companies have turbocharged their attempts to become more environmentally responsible. But their efforts to create and promote eco-friendly products have become increasingly fraught with dilemmas.

Deliver checked in with four marketers concerned about sustainability to see how the marketing environment has changed since last August.

Our panelists were Edith Graves, marketing director of Eason Associates, a Washington, D.C., design firm whose clients include Clark Construction Group, which just completed the first LEED Silver Certified baseball park in the nation, and Greg Owsley, chief branding officer of New Belgium Brewing in Ft. Collins, Colo. Last year, Owsley had just kicked off a campaign called “Follow Your Folly” that encouraged consumers to save local rivers from pollution and to commute by bicycle.

We also talked with Ian Yolles, vice president of brand communications at Nau Inc., an eco-friendly apparel maker headquartered in Portland, Ore., and David Zucker, a corporate social responsibility expert and partner with New York PR firm Porter Novelli.

Deliver: Give me an update on your green marketing efforts.

Owsley: We just measured “Follow Your Folly.” We had a 30-percent increase in people’s awareness that we’re a company that strives to be more sustainable. When we started, less than 10 percent of consumers knew this.

The attendance at Tour de Fat, our bicycling event, doubled in most towns. The messaging last year was so strong that the bike could be the vehicle that leads us out of global warming! In each of the 11 towns, we had one person turn over their car keys and title and give up their car for life. We’re doing a documentary on that.

Graves: We’re on the speaker circuit, talking to designers, printers and end users about [greening their printed materials]. A lot of our clients have sustainable philosophies, but they haven’t thought about the paper they’re using.

We always offer the client three eco-friendly paper selections. Once our clients understand these papers’ properties, they want them. They may or may not cost more, but it sends a powerful message to their audience.

We’re booming right now and we feel fortunate in the current economy. I have to attribute it to something — maybe the sense of goodwill from our yearlong green campaign? Nobody’s hired us saying “You’re the green designer, that’s why we want you.” But it certainly hasn’t hurt our business.

Deliver: David Zucker, are you seeing any major changes in how clients are approaching the eco-friendly story?

Zucker: It’s a time of reckoning: People are confronting the complexity of the communication challenge. They are struggling with how to tell consumer audiences a clear story about the environmental responsibility of any given product.

On the one hand, consumers are motivated to purchase more environmentally friendly products. The dilemma is how to know whether any given product is truly environmentally friendly? The information is so complex that to tell an accurate story becomes very challenging.

For instance, the assumption about food miles early on was simplistic: The message said “local is better.” But that’s not always the case. In Europe, consumers would assume that buying locally grown roses rather than imported ones would be better from a carbon standpoint. In fact, researchers found that roses grown in Kenya had less of a footprint because of the difference in growing processes.

But are consumers going to take the time to sift through that level of information to make purchase decisions, or will they be frustrated and ignore some of this information and go back to old habits?

Deliver: Ian and Greg, are you struggling with this complexity?

Yolles: We are. In trying to think in an iterative, thoughtful way about sustainability, every day we’ve been faced with a multitude of decisions. So we introduced a new section to our Web site, “Grey Matters,” to bring full transparency to the complexity of the decisions we’ve made.

Owsley: For every sustainable move you make, it’s only slightly more pro than it is con.

For us, company growth means more jobs, more of our sustainable practices in our territory, but it also means more fossil fuels under our beer.

We try not to use the term “green marketing.” If green means lessening your impact, well, marketing means increasing your sales. Those are at odds. It’s also a classically American response to a crisis: We’ll shop our way out of global warming. We’re not quite sure that’s the complete answer. How do we continue to work on sustainability from the heart?

Graves: All of these paper companies are promoting green design and printing, and I know it is from the heart. These are 200-year-old companies with deep respect for the woods. The more they work to preserve them, the better for their companies. Paper companies now can provide documentation and certification of their eco-friendly practices. And printers and clients need to know to ask for it. The demand creates the supply. Eventually, this will be the norm.

Owsley: To me, the disclaimers are what’s so key to any long-term green messaging. You have to admit to the failings while you also tout the successes. We’re doing that on our aluminum-can 12-pack. [We’re saying that] cans are only a little better than bottles; this won’t make us green, this will make us only slightly greener.

Yolles: There’s an enormous amount of greenwashing going on. I have some faith that over time people will be able to separate authenticity from marketing spin. We’re in the digital age. Everyone is a filmmaker, everyone has a blog, so they’re instantaneously publishers and journalists. So in this world, there is a level of transparency and also the ability for stories to be transmitted very broadly, very rapidly, and that’s completely unprecedented. In the digital world, there’s a persistence of memory, and so the notion of what you do and how you do it is more important than ever before.

Deliver: The Direct Marketing Association recently strengthened its ethics guidelines to require that its members notify customers of their ability to opt out of mailings in every commercial solicitation. Will this Commitment to Consumer Choice measure hurt or help your efforts to promote eco-friendly activities?
Owsley: We don’t deploy direct marketing. Yet if these guidelines could alleviate a lot of the ecological burden — as well as the marketing clutter — of junk mail, it might become a medium we’d consider.

Deliver: Interesting! So you’d see it as a more ecologically friendly alternative and one potentially worth pursuing?

Owsley: Only if direct mail were truly cleaned up of the clutter that makes going to the mailbox a chore and allowed us to deliver nice surprises to consumers who would most appreciate them. I still think the tactile experience mail brings is special, but largely the consumer perception these days is “turn off the faucet.” If that changes? Yeah, we’d be interested. We’d probably send something like our postcards, which we call “post-coasters,” that could have a life after being a mail piece.

By: Steve Cuno

We recently ran across this gem on a bank’s Web site: “To us, [our city] is not a ‘market’ … While some banks are looking to make a profit, we want to make a difference, one person at a time.”

Perhaps, somewhere, someone was moved by this copy. All we were compelled to do, though, was ask how anyone could write such palpably self-serving drivel. Of course, we also already knew the answer: palpably self-serving drivel is beguiling. It charms and distracts while it infests copy. The bankers who approved that copy probably believed it. They had no clue that customers stumbling upon the line would either ignore it or, worse, roll their eyes and say, “Oh, come on.”

That reaction is no small matter. It signals that you’ve wasted your budget on words that accomplish nothing, insulted your target market’s intelligence and stripped credibility from your message. When that happens, you’re no longer marketing. You’re publishing noise that is easily tuned out.

To protect against the beguilement of self-serving drivel, we highly recommend applying what one shop calls the “Oh, Come On!” Test, a do-it-yourself diagnostic procedure designed to help keep your marketing free from cynicism-inspiring contaminants.

It consists of three quick steps: 1. Slip into your market’s shoes. 2. See if your copy strikes a chord — or makes you say, “Oh, come on.” 3. Be honest with yourself about your reaction.

That third step is the hardest. Many advertisers truly believe their product is the “world’s best” and expect you to believe it, too. This makes us think of a scene from a movie we really like, in which the lead female character describes her male counterpart as the planet’s rudest person. He responds by calling her accusation silly, mainly because she couldn’t possibly know everyone on the planet. True, of course — and the national advertiser’s claim that it makes “the world’s most excellent pickle” is equally as silly.

Some advertisers try to foist on us claims that, while technically true, are still far-fetched. If you’re a national mortgage company sending out direct mail that is “introducing a new way to save,” don’t expect recipients to bother looking for a unique savings plan. At this point, most consumers know it’s just another offer with a zero percent intro rate and that they “save” by transferring balances from interest-accruing cards to the “new” card. Their response: “Oh, come on.”

Then there are advertisers who forget to back up their claims. They’ll say, “We put customers first,” without bothering to shop their own stores, step up training or better screen employees.

Generous application of the “Oh, Come On” Test early and often can help rid your marketing of such embarrassments — leaving room for substantive copy points in their place. Best of all, the test is a simple, effective reminder that, no matter how much a marketer may believe a claim, the bottom line is whether consumers buy it.

Steve Cuno is the chairman of RESPONSE Prospecting & Loyalty Strategies and author of The Fallible Gut: A Marketer’s Guide To Surviving Intuition.

“Green” took home the gold recently as our eco-themed September issue of Deliver was voted the most popular in our “Best of 2007” online readers’ poll.

The Deliver “green” issue, which focused on how environmental concerns are affecting direct marketing, only barely beat out our May ’07 issue, earning the top spot by a mere two votes. Readers who voted for the “green” issue in the poll, which was conducted on delivermagazine.com, said in online comments that they appreciated its relevance and boldness.

“I also really loved the fact that they even listed companies that produce ‘green products’ that offices like ours can start using to help in this very important cause,” wrote a reader identified as “Stacie.” “Thanks for producing such a great magazine. Keep up the great work!”

Another reader voted for the September issue because both he and his clients value their green marketing efforts. “This issue provided some great ideas and resources, and it did a great job of showing how good ‘green’ can look!” he added.

The December issue (No. 6) earned the third-highest vote total, followed by our July issue (No. 3) that focused on loyalty programs. The March and November issues (Nos. 1 and 5, respectively) tied for the remaining votes in the survey.

Here’s What Readers are Saying…

Deliver received 712 unique comments from readers participating in our “Best of 2007” magazine poll. Here’s a sampling of what they had to say about last year’s six issues …

Issue No. 4

• “I have been trying to convince my office to go green for a while now. When this issue showed up, and everyone in the office had it on their desk, more people started joining in on my quest to convince our boss it needed to get done. We now have a recycling program and have reduced the amount of paper we use for printing.”
— Ruben

• “OK, I am probably going to sound cliché here, but it was the green element that captured me with this issue, and I’m not just talkin’ crayons. With all the hype over the past few years about sustainability and going green, the temptation is certainly there for companies to claim a green status but not really follow through. With the September issue, you really did walk the walk. Thanks!”
— Jessie

“This was a great issue embracing the cutting-edge issues fostering green technologies. Living the green dream using recycled paper and environmentally friendly inks showed that you embrace that which you present. How can you not love this issue!”
— John

• “It is difficult to select only one favorite! Each issue featured value and creativity … and after all, isn’t that what mail is all about. I was particularly fond of the ‘green’ issue. The articles captured my interest enough to share with others and I found myself reading the issue twice. Deliver magazine is a remarkable publication and is an asset to marketers in all industries. Keep ’em comin’.
— Peggy

• “This issue was so comprehensive! It covered the challenges and benefits of going green and offered insight on issues from marketing and operations to finance. Not only was the issue about going green, the magazine itself was produced conservatively — preventing literally tons of natural resources from being wasted in the process.”
— Justin

The following readers commented on other 2007 Deliver issues:

Issue No. 1
• “Insightful, relevant articles for the ever-evolving digital age. Truly an issue (and publication series) marketers can utilize for the best in DM practices. Keep up the great work!”
— Ryan

• “Love at first sight! It’s the issue that hooked us and set a standard of excellence. And it became the most dog-eared issue as we passed it around. The digital tech article made us all stop and reconsider reinventing everything.”
— Mark

Issue No. 2
• “As a direct marketing professional with a specific interest in direct mail, I LOVED the piece on Stacy’s Pita Chips sending samples to people named Stacy. Brilliant! I work for a company called The News & Observer and I tried to replicate the promotion, but couldn’t find anybody in the country named The News & Observer. Oh, and let me stroke your egos a little more and say that your creative team is outrageous. You should drug test all of them for performance enhancers. Best trade magazine I’ve read.”
— Scott

• “This was the first issue I was exposed to in my new role, and it couldn’t have come at a better time! As a company finally getting its hands around making the most of our direct mail campaigns, this issue was the catalyst we needed to make some important changes. It really did ‘deliver.’”
— Colleen

Issue No. 3
• “This is my favorite issue because it has a LONG, LONG shelf life! Here we are in 2008 and I am STILL using the tips and tricks from the customer loyalty program article ‘Keep the Faithful’ and the helpful ‘Nuggets of Wisdom’ in all of my marketing and communications initiatives.”
— Chris

• “The loyalty issue was insightful and well timed. My company began introducing our clients to the concept of loyalty programs over 20 years ago, and today they are more exciting, more dynamic, more COST effective, and more relevant than ever. Bravo!”
— Barbara

Issue No. 5
• “The direct marketing issue was fantastic. As a marketer in today’s ever-changing world, where the consumer is bombarded with a million messages and media at once, it is essential to keep up with the trends. I loved the information contained in this issue — especially with regard to the importance of the Web.”
— Anita

• “This magazine has been essential in developing our printing company into a full-service communications group. I use the case studies to drive home the direct marketing techniques that our clients should be thinking about. They are also helpful with our internal efforts to differentiate us from the competition.”
— Paul

Issue No. 6
• “The ability to position your message to both the mainstream audience and groups within the mainstream are critical to every aspect of marketing. Issue No. 6 provided provocative ideas that I have incorporated into my messaging strategy. I loved all the issues (with Issue No. 3 ‘Loyalty’ a close second).”
— JeanAnn

• “The December 2007 issue of Deliver is my favorite issue because it focused on a subject near and dear to my heart, communication. All too often, marketers forget how to effectively communicate with clients both internally and externally. Thank you for reminding us how it is we should be doing our jobs most effectively.”
— Chantelle

Branding has become the hot marketing topic of the new millennium. Advertising agencies have taken to calling themselves “branding agencies.” New books and magazines about branding sprout daily. Marketing talk everywhere centers on the brand.

Yet amid the babble, there’s little agreement about what constitutes a good brand. Some marketers equate the brand with what the rest of us call “corporate identity” — consistent visual presentation. Others equate it with a catch phrase, like any number of news outlets offering news “you can use.” Still others default to awareness and recall: If a sizeable market sample can regurgitate your product name unassisted, you have “brand equity.”

We think these definitions fail to get to the crux of a strong brand. To demonstrate why, we invoke the memory of the high school class nerd. This person dressed consistently geek-like, repeated ad nauseam a catch phrase like “cowabunga, dude” and still springs readily to mind, by name. If consistent visual presentation, a catch phrase and high recall scores make a solid brand, then the class nerd is rock-solid. But a brand should also sell — and you may recall that the nerd was usually the last pick in gym class and rarely went on dates. Seen in that light, the nerd may symbolize a brand, but not a useful one.

Marketing history brims with its own nerds. Consider a domestic car that was named after the founder’s son and was an utter market failure, a soft drink formula change that was recalled when it sparked protests and, more recently, a popular beer campaign that amused us all with its insights about manliness but was pulled when sales plummeted.

These products remain fresh in consumer minds. You may even be able to picture the logos and recall the taglines. If a consistent look, tagline or top-of-mind awareness makes a brand, then each of these failures was a branding success. But a brand isn’t any of those things. Your brand isn’t what you promise. Your brand is the net effect of your values, consistently delivered at every point of contact.

Thus a high-end department store has become known for over-the-top customer service and upscale decor without a tagline like “Great service, real marble floors.” A bookstore chain is known for its comfortable atmosphere where bookworms thrive on helping you find obscure titles without a word to that effect in advertising. And a burgeoning coffeehouse has become a hangout without ever advertising, “The Place to Hang Out.” These marketers have built their brands by having values — and living them.

If you want to capitalize on your brand, you should work on your logo, tagline and noisemaking last. Start by defining your values. A few months ago, Deliver magazine ran a story about a global toymaker that has aligned its values with its brand messages and consistently delivered through direct mail and other outlets. They are as good an example as any of why brands have to define their values above all. And once you do, make sure you deliver on them — online, on the phone, in the store, and face-to-face with vendors and employees as well as customers. Do that, and your brand will speak for itself. Then, when people remember your ads, they may actually believe what you claim in them — and perhaps even buy from you.

Steve Cuno is the chairman of RESPONSE Prospecting & Loyalty Strategies and author of The Fallible Gut: A Marketer’s Guide To Surviving Intuition.

By: Eddie B. Allen Jr.

Three years ago, they began returning home from far-flung war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, bodies maimed, spirits as stout as ever.

And the veterans who would eventually found the Wounded Warrior Project in Virginia also returned home ready to take up a new struggle, this one to ensure quality living conditions for other injured troops coming back home.

They decided that one of the best ways to enlist support was to let people around the country learn about the soldiers’ stories. To this end, the Wounded Warrior Project launched a simple but impassioned direct mail effort to help solicit donations and other forms of support.

The group began sending out letters from veterans to clients, hoping to translate national sentiment toward returning troops into concrete backing. It worked. Today, helped greatly by its direct mail campaigns, the Wounded Warrior Project generates about $14 million a year and boasts more than 175,000 regular donors.

“We get them to respond by telling them a story,” says Geoff Peters, president of Creative Direct Response, a direct mail marketing company that represents the Wounded Warrior Project and about 100 other clients. “Usually, the story involves someone who’s been helped by one of the clients.”

Cause-oriented marketing has become the tool of choice for advocacy agencies of all stripes, from publicly funded institutions to consumer affairs groups. Frequently the strategy of non-profits, various combinations of direct mail and Web communications have buttressed the platforms of organizations with limited staffs and often with no publicity or advertising budgets. Gone are the days of phone calls, handbills or demonstrations as the only options for social organizations looking to mobilize supporters.

Peters, a direct mail expert, says a multi-channel approach has arisen among social groups at a time when many critics thought direct mail would be obsolete.

“People have predicted the demise of direct mail marketing for over 25 years,” points out Peters. “The first time was when the fax machine was invented. The second time was the Internet. If you look at the history, what happened was they all used direct mail to get people to go to their Web sites.”

By Lekan Oguntoyinbo

Two years ago, Kaiser Permanente embarked on a difficult campaign: persuading C-level executives at several major corporations to switch health care providers. To seize the attention of the key decision makers, the company kicked off the campaign — dubbed “In the Company of the Greats” — by first mailing out baseballs encased in Plexiglas and embossed with the names of the targeted executives.

Along with the mailings, the campaign spun stories of brilliant, daring leadership decisions that altered the course of history. One mailing featured the legendary baseball general manager who, 60 years ago, broke the Major League’s color barrier by signing the first African-American player. The second mailing contained a paperweight that included a quote from the woman executive widely credited with turning around one of the world’s largest printing-equipment manufacturers. The campaign was bold, charming and effective, generating numerous leads for the health care provider as well as additional requests for the glass-encased baseballs.

“I’m not going to get an appointment with a CEO by offering him a glow pen,” says Spyro Kourtis, president and CEO of the Hacker Group, which devised the Kaiser campaign. “I’m either getting the appointment by offering something substantial or by offering some information of value to his company.”

And Kourtis echoes a number of his peers. Dimensional mail, also known as lumpy mail, remains the medium of choice for many business-to-business marketers looking to capture the attention of key decision makers.

“The difference between flat mail and dimensional mail is that dimensional mail gets opened more,” says Harvey Hirsch, president and owner of DigitalDimensions3, a Lyndhurst, New Jersey, direct marketing firm that specializes in business-to-business marketing. In fact, according to the Direct Marketing Association, dimensional mail produced an average response of 4.66 percent in 2005. In contrast, the DMA reported, postcard mail had a 1.59 percent response rate. B-to-B direct mail fared only slightly higher with a 2.05 percent response rate.

“My philosophy is, if it looks like a sales pitch, you’ve failed,” adds Hirsch. “We put the ‘wow factor’ into direct mail.”

Not all personalized or dimensional mail uses lumps or bulges to get the point across, of course. Perfect Image, a printing company in Atlanta, used bright-red cloth envelopes to augment its message with one of its clients, a major retailer that had hosted a vendor fair. The envelopes, sprinkled with white stars, presented a very personalized message that was well received and appreciated. Delivering timely, focused printed pieces that communicate for their clients makes Perfect Image a valuable partner. This presentation showed that “we cared about their business” and according to Lynn Stafford, the customer relationship manager of the company, “it played a small part in Perfect Image’s business with that retailer increasing threefold in one year.”

By: Frank S. Washington

Girls rule.

Sure, some adolescent boys might disagree — but when it comes to some of the most effective and immersive marketing experiences currently being developed for younger consumers, there’s no question that female adolescents and pre-teens are a demographic that cannot be ignored. In recent years, several leading toy brands have come up with far-reaching multichannel marketing campaigns that have consistently proven girls to be a valued and influential audience.

Among these brands, few have been more successful in marketing to girls than doll manufacturer American Girl, which specializes in a line of dolls with period themes. Founded in 1986, American Girl started with just a mail-order catalog promoting three dolls (Kirsten, Samantha and Molly).

Since these initial direct mail efforts, the company has exploded. American Girl has sold 117 million books and 13 million dolls. And it continues to be a major player in direct mail: Its catalog ranks as one of the top 25 consumer catalogs in the country; its American Girl magazine has a circulation of 650,000 and receives 10,000 pieces of reader mail every time it is published.

Along with the products that continue to be promoted in the American Girl catalog, the company’s Web site, americangirl.com, gets 23 million visitors each year. More than 20 million of them visit “Fun for Girls,” the editorial section of the site. The company also boasts proprietary retail stores, “American Girl Place” and “American Girl Boutique and Bistro,” the newest boutique/bistro having opened in Dallas this November.

“Our brand has always been more than just a collection of toys,” says American Girl spokeswoman Stephanie Spanos. “Young girls have a deep, emotional connection to our product lines, which has allowed us to create meaningful experiences around them, elevating us to a lifestyle brand.”

At its 40,000-square-foot flagship stores in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, 19 million visitors have experienced what American Girl describes as “experiential retail.” In addition to purchasing dolls and accessories, girls can eat brunch and lunch and enjoy afternoon tea or dinner at the American Girl Cafe. There’s also a theater featuring live productions based on the American Girl books, including The American Girls Revue, as well as a participatory performance for younger girls, Bitty Bear’s Matinee: The Family Tree. Packages include parties, a day at the store, a late night at the store and a chance to be a “Star for a Day.” Special events include things like A Great Day with Grandparents, Doll Hair Salon Spectacular and cooking classes for girls.

American Girl has deployed a host of marketing techniques — from direct mail and event marketing to word-of-mouth and e-mail — to create a full-service experiential retail environment that visitors can see as an extension of an American Girl “lifestyle.”

Marketers who specialize in promoting brands to young consumers underscore that, even in an age when young people are hooked on the Internet, direct mail remains the most effective way to carry on an ongoing conversation with them.

Mistaking an argument for proof — Despite elegant arguments that stress causes ulcers, the culprit turned out to be a bacterium. The argument that creativity is the key to advertising success is no less elegant, and no closer to the mark.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (“After this, therefore because of this”) — It’s tempting to assume that what happened first caused what happened next. But before you conveniently decide that the new ad campaign made sales go up or down, consider what else was going on. Sometimes weather has an effect.

Anecdotes as conclusive — Many police officers “know” from personal experience that crime increases under a full moon, but actual records show it isn’t so. Beware basing marketing decisions on anecdotes, even from reliable sources. Stories aren’t evidence.

Stereotyping — No, more men won’t buy your industrial product if you put a sexy woman in your ad. Before assuming how a given population will act, test and watch.

God of the gaps — Ancient humans filled in their knowledge gaps by chalking up the unexplainable to everything from the stars to the gods. Marketers do that when they automatically credit high sales to their pet god of the gaps (advertising, location, dress code, accounting, you name it) and blame low sales on their pet scapegoat (advertising, location, dress code, accounting, you name it).

All or nothing — Vaccinations don’t work on everyone, but they work on the vast majority, so we’d be foolish to halt them. It would be equally foolish to stop a successful ad campaign because of a few complaints or to continue an unsuccessful one because of a few compliments.

Self-serving research — There’s only one correct answer to, “Do you like my new haircut?” The point of research should be to discover, not to get people to say what you want to hear.

Sneaky biases — Remember those police officers who correlate crime with lunar phases? They are inadvertent victims of hindsight and selection bias — recalling cases that confirm and overlooking those that don’t. Biases sneak up on the best of us. When you’re tempted to recall what all successful marketing campaigns have in common, resist. Consult the data instead.

Inventing objectives after the fact — Sometimes ad campaigns are deemed “successful” for a result that wasn’t in the plan. “Sales fell, but the campaign won three awards” works only if the original goal was to win awards regardless of sales.

Confusing correlation and causation — Ask any economist: Correlations are often mere coincidence. I knew an advertiser who was convinced that ads with her photo in them outsold ads without. The correlation was valid, but the photos weren’t the cause. The other ads had weaker headlines and ran in off-target publications. Dig deep before deciding what causes what.

— Steve Cuno

Click here to read more about how marketers can avoid gut-driven decisions.

If you think your gut defies the odds and is right most of the time, I’d suggest four possibilities that might explain your perceived infallibility: disqualification, incomplete information, tossing coins and reading clues.

Disqualification is the tendency to embrace what confirms and overlook what contradicts. People whose guts are right “most of the time” often forget or disqualify the times they were wrong.

Incomplete information is another problem. In some organizations, saying the boss was mistaken is career-limiting, so news of failures never makes it to the top. Information fails to surface for other reasons, too. If you feel, but can’t verify, that your advertising produces sales, you really don’t know if your ads are working or not. You just think you know.

If your gut really is right most of the time — it’s possible — you may be a lucky coin flipper. As one author has observed, if you flip a coin long enough, you will encounter short streaks. On average, he notes, you’ll flips five heads or tails consecutively once in every 32 sequences of five tosses. If your gut really has been right most of the time, beware: The next toss may betray you.

It’s also possible that, instead of having an infallible gut, you’re adept at reading clues. Now, you may say, “Fine. Call it gut intuition or reading clues. Either way, I’m never wrong.” But retrospect makes it hard to distinguish clue-reading from whimsy. Did your gut tell you a job interview went well or were you attuned to the interviewer’s positive clues? And reading clues is subject to error. The brightest people misread clues, fail to see clues or see non-existent clues.

You may read clues well. But don’t bet your marketing budget on it.

— Steve Cuno

Click here to read more about how marketers can avoid gut-driven decisions.