Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

High-Impact Marketing: Rock Creative Pre-Testing!

Prologue. Recent Conversation with CEO B: Me: I saw your ad at the airport the other day. I have a sense for your challenges and Marketing objectives. I’m sorry, but that ad was heartbreaking. I sense it is trying to be too clever. And, it demands an immense amount of attention to understand, who in their right mind would give you that? You know I love Creative Pre-Testing (CpT). You should test the ad for effectiveness, before you spend money. CEO B: First: You are right. After a few months of the campaign, we have seen no impact. Second: Avinash, I listen to you. We did pre-test the ad creative.…

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Scapegoating Analysts | Recognizing & Preventing A Bad Idea.

Here’s a sign that you’ve arrived as an Analyst or an Analytics team: At the first sign of failure reported by the data, most people blame you (Analyst/Data). Wear it as a badge of honor! It means your analysis has identified insights that are big enough, important enough, that the recipients get instantly worried. Ideally, you live in a culture where good analysis identifying poor performance would be warmly welcomed as an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to change, and, for the bravest cultures, an opportunity to change leadership posture (or leaders). What's often a lot more common is to take the easy way out by sowing doubt, undertaking "rationalizations,"…

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