The Courage to be Wrong

We all want to be correct, and will often need to be, but holding some things too tightly can cause many a problem, and even hold you back from getting to the 'right' answers and work.

Good afternoon..

..and a big warm hello to my new readers as well as existing. Has been a busy month, and as I do each July, I write one last post preceding an August break, before I return - in theory bright-eyed and bushy tailed, in September. We will see about that!

I wanted to write about what has been in my thinking a lot lately, and inspired from my own line of work. And in the process of reconciling one’s own experience and self-actualisation, considering the things we call into question and the things that remain true. Given the theme of evergreen marketing here, it is only right I share here too.

There are a couple of variations of one of my favourite quotes / philosophies.
Firstly, in 1940, theologist and clergyman Ralph W. Sockman:

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”

Then in the science world, as recently as 2014, physicist Marcelo Gleiser added :

"As the island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance - the boundary between the known and the unknown."

Whether it be the confines of science or the limitless nature of art, literature and religion, the consensus is clear : the more you know, the more you realise you perhaps don’t know. Take note marketers, who need to sit across the humanities.

In contrast, I often think about the Dunning-Kruger effect. Look into it if you aren’t overly aware, but in simple terms it is the cognitive bias of those who know less, and don’t think there’s more to know, or at least don’t feel the need to learn more, and exude such dogmatic confidence in their absolute knowledge. That is dangerous. I also think the phenomenon is absolutely less in a minority than we’d have hoped too.

So what have I got wrong?

Loads I imagine. This Substack alone, as much as I always try to ground my writing in as much experience, insight and quoted wisdom or data as possible, there’s no way I could always be right, as much as it pains me to say that, given that my expertise and experience is my commercial offering. Perhaps hardly ever in some eyes :) I’d be arrogant to think otherwise. My hope is to be constantly aware of what is happening and corral it into this specific lens of proper marketing fundamentals. Maybe the unintended consequence of such framing could sound overly dogmatic in another direction, albeit not the intention. I hope there are things you can challenge me on.

But for the purpose of this conversation - it is about the day to day work, the stuff I have been doing for 22 years. The journey from fresh faced, highly enthused graduate to now. I know I have been wrong so much and on so many occasions. Taken the wrong jobs. Quit the wrong way. Hired the wrong people. Offered the wrong scope. Said the wrong thing. Listened to the wrong advice. Screwed by the wrong clients. Taken the wrong approach. Found data from the wrong source.

Hell, I have probably said the wrong stuff in meetings earlier on in my career, trusting my intuition and intellect to sound smart because that’s what people do who look successful, only to have my point torn to shreds by someone who lives in the evidence. Harsh lesson learnt. I learnt fast that you cannot be strong at everything (also if you try to gain credibility where you aren’t credible, you can lose credibility in the area you wish to be)! But it also got me thinking about perspectives. Data can be right. But so can the gut.

The challenge - being ‘right’ is ingrained into our success thinking

I think for all of us it stems from when we were younger. From school tests, through to making a sports team, and especially into your early career path. Being right feels like the only way to be successful, then be seen as successful, and credible, notably in corporate environments. Being wrong however - that is terminal and it must mean that you are terrible.

You were wrong, and they were right, and they love it and you don’t. That is the society we have created. It is the ultimate wealth signal of intellectual currency it seems. Being correct. Knowing the answers. Correcting others. It happens so much.

Indeed, there are some things you have to get right, critical things that training supports. Cybersecurity, food hygiene, piloting a plane or first aid resuscitation. There are also some things that are blatantly wrong and are instantly correctable, and laced with malice. Forged accounts. Abuse and harassment, Outright lies. they are just wrong, Capital W Wrong. Challenge them. That’s the bad kind of wrong.

But I’d argue a lot of wrong is good.

It is often well-intentioned. It is learning. It is the path to enlightenment, or at the least an enriched perspective of your current position.

This is about the purity of discovery, insight and truth, something we all need to be better at in the pursuit of better work, and better relationships. In life, in business, in marketing, in communication plans, in internal action.

Specifically in marketing; the development of a strategic approach to growth, a brand platform, a campaign launch. Principles and fundamentals always remain, but findings are not dogmatic and need challenging.

And now with AI, everything is synthetically right, so we must be too?

At any given moment, anyone with a keyboard and a pair of eyes can get an AI engine to deliver insight or at least aggregated knowledge on something, derived from online ‘intelligence’ to give you a synthesis of something, empowering many to both sound superficially smarter as well as those looking to create deeper knowledge. For the former, this is Dunning-Kruger’s heartland.

But if you don’t know what you don’t know, how do you know it is right? How do you know what to question? What to interrogate? What to critically evaluate? What to know is wrong and a hallucination (basically when generative chats fill gaps with confident sounding statements - sound familiar?)

But what if we subvert the expectancy of Right, and challenge and question our own thoughts more?

The strategic marketing process should be there to interrogate the presumptions. Proper strategy creation should help here. One can go in with a hypothesis, or dare I say a bias they really want to validate, and then obstinately hope for the data point to back the validation and intended position. But you can end up with an emperor’s new clothes scenario. I think it’s good to have a starting point of discovery, but I personally want to be proven wrong; I truly love it when an insight, albeit sourced from data points, things people have said, social listening, an observed reality, or financial data gives me a new truth. It moves the conversation. It moves the work. What a feeling. Why wouldn’t we want that? Why would we want to remain right from the start?

An interesting consideration is our legacy perceptions and biases on what is new and what is anodyne. Take trend reports. Often perceived (and at times rightly so) as a lot of non insightful insight and filler. If I’m doing some market research, and a trend report states something new, I lean into it, it’s great to find. However if a trend report also invariably states something that in my eyes is obvious (reinforcing the perception), perhaps it’s on me to accept the evergreen truth, however bland, rather than reduce to the cool contrarian take of ‘that isn’t an insight’. Sometimes things staying the same could well create a huge insight and a platform of truth you need.

Two wrongs CAN make a right.

Some things are just Wrong of course. But what if 2 marketers argue about the right way? We have heard the semantic arguments play out. In meetings, in pubs, in comments sections and now on stage in the Palais at Cannes. But it’s often an illusion.

Let’s take an ad-land classic : The 60:40 rule by Binet and field much cited The Long & The Short of It. For Brand and Activation/Performance. A derived dichotomy from a databank of notable global advertisers showing how growth is consistent with a promotional mix of circa 60% brand awareness activity and 40% for activating or capturing demand through performance or whatever mechanic. They were right of course 13 years ago, the data presented this. And today I think it remains an excellent ideological approach, with the fundamental of brand driving performance too.

But they aren’t the only right. In fact it is very wrong and inappropriate for many advertisers, line in the sand, even dangerous to follow so militantly, I’ve worked with startup clients who are performance first. I try to encourage more brands, and over time they learn to know they need it, but the performance is working, and in their case is serving a duality. It is rooted in reality, their effectiveness, and budget and creative capability, rooted in the need to accelerate a lead gen appetite for their sales rep, or an eCommerce activation to shift stock. Short term is cited as wrong/bad, long term is always the correct popular approach. It can be. But sometimes the now matters more than the theorist will give credit for. Are they wrong to shift product and feed their rep? Of course not. They are right too. For them. Both can be right! How arrogant would it be for a commentator or academic to tell a business they are wrong to do this? Without any context at least? If research and insight are the fertilisers of knowledge, then surely the coal face of business and commerce is the most natural of its kind.

Like above, I see people ‘go in’ on people online, on LinkedIn for example, and I’ve even had it on Substack too, folk telling them that they are wrong. Fine. But 2 things. The corrected author’s often offended and doubles down on position, which is mostly fine, but it is a chance to be educated. It is not weakness to concede to new insight. On the flip-side, the commentator/provocateur (we know them, they tell everyone it is red if others say yellow) perhaps they are wrong, and are too obstinate to be enlightened by said author. It works all ways.

So… be Wrong about what you thought was the Right way

Being wrong is normal, it is not necessarily stupidity, more likely a less-informed position preceding insight. Being wrong is the right way - it is curiosity, it is growth. With enlightenment or at least more insight, embrace the wrong and you are on a journey towards a rounded, informed right.

Embrace the new shoreline of ignorance

The fact you want to learn more is a great thing. To get to that place, I feel we all just need to be more comfortable with being wrong. It is ingrained so deeply to not be; I know this and you may sit there saying you cannot afford to be wrong. Perhaps it needs cultural change. But it does not have to be a slight on your ability, more a commendation on your ability to maintain the thirst for adding insight to your dominion. That surely cannot be a bad thing!

Ironically, as I am about to hit publish, I have received a newsletter about an event about ‘The predictive economy’ ; the thirst for knowledge is there and everywhere, but the thirst for prophecies is equally concerning. Do we really want to know it all? Can we in perpetuity, as things always evolve and develop? Therefore we should too?

Enough of that. As usual, I am taking August off Front of Mind, to have a bit more time to rest, to recharge (to right my many wrongs no doubt) and to hopefully return in September, so see you then!

I say hopefully, as you can ever be too certain, right?

SA

P.S I really hope you are getting a semblance of value out of this. If so, and you think any other marketer or business owner would, feel free to share/forward this to them. Also, follow me on LinkedIn, personally or on my company page. If you want to discuss anything, you need some marketing advice, or you just want to discuss something I’ve said, drop me a line. Thanks and happy reading / marketing!

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