Dig the science, deliver with soul
When I was an arrogant 17-year-old, I read half a Nietzsche book and started declaring myself a proud Atheist. The existence of a Divine Deity didn't make sense to me, it wasn't logical, therefore not worth my time.
As you grow older, you realise the purpose of trusting in irrational things is not about the things themselves. It's that there's a wider recognition the world doesn't always make sense, so we latch onto things that sort of do.
We all need belief systems, and in the world of marketing we tend to default to two systems of belief: you're either a data person, or you're an intuition person. Or, for the purposes of prose, you're into science or soul.
I find this to be a quite limiting way of looking at things. Sure, it means you get to go deep, and feel affiliated with a tribe, and probably get people to help you win over arguments on LinkedIn, but none of it really matters.
What matters is to what extent your system of belief:
Benefits the people you're working with
Benefits the organisation you're working with
We don't evaluate these two dimensions nearly enough, we simply assume of course everyone understands the role of brand. Or distinctiveness. Or emotion. Or halo effects and their relation to total value share growth.
Science-based organisations tend to employ science-based people who operate on science-based assumptions. If you can't back the thing you just said with some form of data, I can't sell it. Go back and lose all morale.
Soul-based organisations tend to employ soul-based people who operate on soul-based assumptions. Don't worry about backing your case, I either like it or I don't like it. Move me, dude! Or else, no award gong for you.
This is where strategy can come into play, because we're in the chimeric position of starting from the science but needing to translate it into soul. Or sometimes, capturing soul and backing it with the necessary science.
Now, before you get all purist about post-rationalisation and the value of strategy, let's admit something. Hold hands. You ready? Sometimes we have an instinct and we make the case around our instinct. It happens.
And you know what? It's ok. There is value in experience. It means you have a subconscious response about the thing that needs doing, effectively a hypothesis, and you then go find evidence to prove or disprove it.
Now of course, there's a danger that we may go all soul and selectively disregard all the science that contradicts us, which feels hypocritical. But it's only natural that some science contradicts us; as long as most doesn't.
In some sense, science is the wrong starting point at all. A compelling way to talk about this overwhelming middle ground of science and soul is to actually think like a lawyer in court. You either can prove things, or not.
But proving things is never just about the facts. Nor it is, sorry to say, about what the truth is. It's all about what people perceive to be the truth, given the evidence you can produce, and beyond reasonable doubt.
'Beyond reasonable doubt' feels very un-rigorous, but the reality is if you look into a large enough dataset, you can find enough proof for anything. So this isn't a game of absolutes, but of making net positive cases in court.
Going from here, I wanted to do something I keep promising myself I want to write about to see if there's interest, and then somehow never do it. I want to be more diligent about curating academic evidence for you all.
Not because I want this newsletter to lose its soul, but precisely because I want to demonstrate that you can think about our craft with soul while starting from the science. We all win when they can, and do, co-exist.
So, consider this edition the first of a series. But I need your help. I want you to tell me what bits of marketing and advertising science I should investigate, so I can then deliver it with as much soul as I possibly can.
Ready? Just reply to this email. Wait, not just yet... ok now. Go!
