The sin of certainty before insight…

Our marketing communications firm participates in RFPs from time to time, on the basis that we will not offer solutions until we conduct a discovery to understand the client’s business and marketing problem. Repeatedly, we find this is NOT the method of other firms participating in the RFP, as they continue to pitch a range of ideas along with an impressively presumptuous calendar of tactics.

This is a dangerous disservice to the prospective client.
So why does it keep happening?

It happens because people and companies don’t want to make decisions based on deep insight. They want instant expertise from instant experts who can boldly prescribe a new website, a new pdf brochure and an email campaign with social media thrown in. In other words, companies want certainty, and there are agencies still around that are willing to sell certainty in lieu of insight, planning and strategic execution.

Don’t believe this? It happens to be a neurological fact.

In his recent book How We Decide, author Jonah Lehrer documents the human brain’s capacity to short-circuit logic in favor of emotionally desired decisions. Among the many research and real-life examples cited is the inaccuracy of political pundits, quite possibly the most “confident” experts on the planet. In a study done by psychologist Philip Tetlock, 82,361 different predictions by political pundits were evaluated as to the accuracy of their outcomes. These pundits include the folks we watch Sunday mornings on the various political roundtables. On average, the pundits had predicted the correct historical outcome less than 33% of the time. In other words, a dart-throwing bubba could have beaten the majority of these overconfident prognosticators.

Why are so many “experts” so wrong? As Lehrer conveys, the central error diagnosed by the study was the sin of certainty: “Even though practically all of the professionals in Tetlock’s study claimed that they were dispassionately analyzing the evidence – everybody wanted to be rational – many of them were actually indulging in some conveniently cultivated ignorance.”

When agencies confidently present solutions to business problems they don’t yet understand, it is because they have learned that many clients would rather see the creative decision than the business understanding. When this happens, agency and client are both like political pundits whose thinking is short-circuited by their stubborn ideologies.

Except, in the case of many an RFP, the sin of certainty ends months later with the presumptuous agency moving on to the next RFP, and the client holding the agency's invoices.

jb