Rory Sutherland Columnist I The value of nothing said Im planning to cancel my card you knew what to say. But t is probably time for the veterans of the direct marketing nothing in between got anything like the same amount of money industry to write a letter of apology to everyone currently or attention. Acquisition and retention were both cases where you working in advertising and marketing. The letter would have could measure success not only accurately, but also very rapidly. a headline (because, in direct marketing, letters do have Any outcome was easily and quickly attributable to a single input. headlines) and it would read something like this: Were sorry we Heres what you could never do, however. If anyone suggested, really should have warned you about this earlier. for instance, that it might be a nice idea to send your customers a Allow me to explain. I spent the first 20 years of my career very birthday or Christmas card, or some useful information, the odds happily working in a direct marketing agency. Because our work of you getting any budget to do this were pretty much zero. Yes, was measurable and results were quantifiable, I learned a great quantification is great but that doesnt mean you should never deal in this field. Working in direct marketing in the last century do anything you cant quantify. not only exposed you to wonderful luminaries such as Drayton And heres the conundrum marketing finds itself in today. Its Bird and Steve Harrison, but also taught you about the vagaries in the same minefield direct marketing found itself trapped in in of human behaviour. 1995. Tragically, naively, we all thought accountability would be My joyous years in direct marketing were rather like being paid our salvation. Instead, it turned into a curse. We had the to conduct social science experiments on a grand scale. The often delusional belief that once you could quantify the value of counterintuitive findings from testing and measurement revealed marketing, the money spent on it would increase and the pain of a great deal about consumer psychology. This is precisely why justifying your existence would fall. What David Ogilvy always recommended that we failed to warn you about was that the every advertising copywriter should start Perfunctory, wham-bam, price you pay for quantification is that it their career in direct response. transactional exchanges rapidly turns from servant to tyrant. Alongside lessons on consumer will always be highly amenable Many highly eective and potent forms psychology, we also learned about to measurement of marketing activity simply do not corporate psychology from the equally indeed, cannot - deliver their results strange behaviour of direct marketing immediately. Its why Field and Binet clients. Unfortunately, when clients got called their study The long and the short of it. Short-term eects the direct marketing bug, a new problem raised its head and it are immediate, but may be fleeting; long-term eects, which tend is this discovery we should have shared with you all sooner. to aggregate exponentially over time, are slower. By the time they Once anyone devoted their attention to activities where you emerge, any chance of disentangling one communications could justify, to the penny, the value of everything you did, they contribution to the overall return becomes impossible. became mentally incapable of doing anything else. It was no But it still pays. You just dont know how much. And heres the longer is this a good idea?, but rather can we prove its a good problem. Perfunctory, wham-bam, transactional exchanges will idea to three decimal places? always be highly amenable to measurement. Almost by definition, There is an enormous hidden price you pay once you become longer-term relational exchanges are not. addicted to the crack cocaine of accountability you become I would go further. I would argue that, almost by definition, any incapable of justifying anything that isnt immediately measurable, true relationship requires investment in value exchanges that defy even when it might be eminently sensible to do so. quantification. Generally, we dont pay our spouses for sex. If you were working as a direct marketing agency for a credit Relational exchanges are characterised by a form of iterative card client, for example, there would be a large amount of money reciprocation designed to defy financial evaluation. Once put aside to test acquisition mailings. These very quickly and something can be quantified, it loses its value. Never tell your measurably revealed their return on investment. There was also spouse what you paid for their birthday present. a generous budget given to a call centre to test the best means of We really should have warned you about this, shouldnt we? retention of credit card customers, so if someone rang up and 7 Impact ISSUE 36 2022_pp6-7_Rory.indd 7 08/12/2021 09:32