CHAPTER 19 | CALLING BULLSHIT ON FALLACIES

There are so many ways we, as humans, make questionable choices that it is hard to limit heuristics to the ones outlined in this BOOK OF SECRETS series.

Most heuristics don’t actually involve marketing, but rather, understanding. Lack of understanding, when you extend that to ignorance, and further extend that through ego and narcissism, becomes dogmatism.

Dogmatism is the virus that creates political divide. People used to fight over Coke vs Pepsi. Not a thing anymore.

There are two psychological tenets in the faulty deduction category that need strong, marketing professional, objections.

DESIGN FALLACY: TRUE TO A POINT, THEN WRONG WRONG WRONG

Design fallacy suggests that good graphic design is somehow malicious, disguising bad products with good visuals.

While this can be technically be true, as a buried treasure under the cement floor of your basement can also possibility be true, the tenet implies that CEOs and CMOs of bad products pursue beautifully designed packaging to hide inferior products.

Behold, a flaming bag of bullshit on the front stoop of the house of psychology!

True, beautiful packaging is a promise that drives an expectation that the contents of the packaging will superior. This is a tool of brand development. For tires? No. But would you buy a sweater at Nordstom and expect it handed to you in a clear air compressed bag? Also no.

Smart CEOs and CMOs obsess about presentation, customer experience, delivery and unpacking.

When C-suite cares like that, it is likely the product will also be exceptional. When C-suite is sloppy, so is the product, the investment in design, marketing, all of it.

Correlation for the win.

We are marketers. We drink and know things. (Game of Thrones reference.)

THE GAMBLER’S FALLACY

The other fallacy that mathematicians clutch like pearls is that if a coin flips 10 times and is heads, the next coin flip’s probability is still 50/50.

If you are at the casino, and the roulette wheel has shown red seven times, immediately bet black. Yes. Do it. DO IT. We know things.

This probability is related, albeit distantly, to the Monty Hall Paradox, which was declared and solved in 1990 by Marilyn vos Savant, the Guinness Book of Record holder for the Highest IQ ever (220).

You’re on the game show Let’s Make a Deal. Three doors. Behind one is a car, behind the other two are goats. You pick Door 1. Door 2 opens, and it’s a goat. Monty Hall says, “Want to stay with Door Number 1, or switch to Door Number 3?

SWITCH! PICK DOOR THREE! You now have a 66% probability to win the car, not a 50/50 probability.

Don't zag, zig.

Bet on marketers, not psychologists or philosophers, to know the real odds.