GO PLACIDLY AMID THE NOISE & HASTE, & REMEMBER WHAT PEACE THERE MAY BE IN SILENCE. AS FAR AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly & clearly; listen to others, even the dull & ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud & aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater & lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees & the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery & broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.
(Found in an old church back in the 15th century)
June 20, 2008
Gibran K. Gibran: You Have Your Lebanon...
You Have Your Lebanon and I Have My Lebanon
--Gibran Khalil Gibran
(written after the first World War, in the 1920's)
You have your Lebanon and its dilemma. I have my Lebanon and its beauty. Your Lebanon is an arena for men from the West and men from the East.
My Lebanon is a flock of birds fluttering in the early morning as shepherds lead their sheep into the meadow and rising in the evening as farmers return from their fields and vineyards.
You have your Lebanon and its people. I have my Lebanon and its people.
Yours are those whose souls were born in the hospitals of the West; they are as ship without rudder or sail upon a raging sea.... They are strong and eloquent among themselves but weak and dumb among Europeans.
They are brave, the liberators and the reformers, but only in their own area. But they are cowards, always led backwards by the Europeans. They are those who croak like frogs boasting that they have rid themselves of their ancient, tyrannical enemy, but the truth of the matter is that this tyrannical enemy still hides within their own souls. They are the slaves for whom time had exchanged rusty chains for shiny ones so that they thought themselves free. These are the children of your Lebanon. Is there anyone among them who represents the strength of the towering rocks of Lebanon, the purity of its water or the fragrance of its air? Who among them vouchsafes to say, "When I die I leave my country little better than when I was born"?
Who among them dare to say, "My life was a drop of blood in the veins of Lebanon, a tear in her eyes or a smile upon her lips"?
Those are the children of your Lebanon. They are, in your estimation, great; but insignificant in my estimation.
Let me tell you who are the children of my Lebanon.
They are farmers who would turn the fallow field into garden and grove.
They are the shepherds who lead their flocks through the valleys to be fattened for your table meat and your woolens.
They are the vine-pressers who press the grape to wine and boil it to syrup.
They are the parents who tend the nurseries, the mothers who spin the silken yarn.
They are the husbands who harvest the wheat and the wives who gather the sheaves.
They are the builders, the potters, the weavers and the bell-casters.
They are the poets who pour their souls in new cups.
They are those who migrate with nothing but courage in their hearts and strength in their arms but who return with wealth in their hands and a wreath of glory upon their heads.
They are the victorious wherever they go and loved and respected wherever they settle.
They are the ones born in huts but who died in palaces of learning.
These are the children of Lebanon; they are the lamps that cannot be snuffed by the wind and the salt which remains unspoiled through the ages.
They are the ones who are steadily moving toward perfection, beauty, and truth.
What will remain of your Lebanon after a century? Tell me! Except bragging, lying and stupidity? Do you expect the ages to keep in its memory the traces of deceit and cheating and hypocrisy? Do you think the atmosphere will preserve in its pockets the shadows of death and the stench of graves?
Do you believe life will accept a patched garment for a dress? Verily, I say to you that an olive plant in the hills of Lebanon will outlast all of your deeds and your works; that the wooden plow pulled by the oxen in the crannies of Lebanon is nobler than your dreams and aspirations.
I say to you, while the conscience of time listened to me, that the songs of a maiden collecting herbs in the valleys of Lebanon will outlast all the uttering of the most exalted prattler among you. I say to you that you are achieving nothing. If you knew that you are accomplishing nothing, I would feel sorry for you, but you know it not.
You have your Lebanon and I have my Lebanon.
(Picture of Maxime Chaya, the first Lebanese to climb Everest on May 15, 2006)
Gibran K. Gibran: Biography
Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, to the Maronite family of Gibran in Bsharri, a mountainous area in Northern Lebanon [Lebanon was a Turkish province part of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) and subjugated to Ottoman dominion]. His mother Kamila Rahmeh was thirty when she begot Gibran from her third husband Khalil Gibran, who proved to be an irresponsible husband leading the family to poverty. Gibran had a half-brother six years older than him called Peter and two younger sisters, Mariana and Sultana, whom he was deeply attached to throughout his life, along with his mother. Kamila's family came from a prestigious religious background, which imbued the uneducated mother with a strong will and later on helped her raise up the family on her own in the U.S. Growing up in the lush region of Bsharri, Gibran proved to be a solitary and pensive child who relished the natural surroundings of the cascading falls, the rugged cliffs and the neighboring green cedars, the beauty of which emerged as a dramatic and symbolic influence to his drawings and writings. Being laden with poverty, he did not receive any formal education or learning, which was limited to regular visits to a village priest who doctrined him with the essentials of religion and the Bible, alongside Syriac and Arabic languages. Recognizing Gibran's inquisitive and alert nature, the priest began teaching him the rudiments of alphabet and language, opening up to Gibran the world of history, science, and language. At the age of ten, Gibran fell off a cliff, wounding his left shoulder, which remained weak for the rest of his life ever since this incident. To relocate the shoulder, his family strapped it to a cross and wrapped it up for forty days, a symbolic incident reminiscent of Christ's wanderings in the wilderness and which remained etched in Gibran's memory.
At the age of eight, Khalil Gibran, Gibran's father, was accused of tax evasion and was sent to prison as the Ottomon authorities confiscated the Gibrans' property and left them homeless. The family went to live with relatives for a while; however, the strong-willed mother decided that the family should immigrate to the U.S., seeking a better life and following in suit to Gibran's uncle who immigrated earlier. The father was released in 1894, but being an irresponsible head of the family he was undecided about immigration and remained behind in Lebanon.
On June 25, 1895, the Gibrans embarked on a voyage to the American shores of New York.
The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, which at the time hosted the second largest Syrian community in the U.S. following New York. The culturally diverse area felt familiar to Kamila, who was comforted by the familiar spoken Arabic, and the widespread Arab customs. Kamila, now the bread-earner of the family, began to work as a peddler on the impoverished streets of South End Boston. At the time, peddling was the major source of income for most Syrian immigrants, who were negatively portrayed due to their unconventional Arab ways and their supposed idleness.
In the school, a registration mistake altered his name forever by shortening it to Kahlil Gibran, which remained unchanged till the rest of his life despite repeated attempts at restoring his full name. Gibran entered school on September 30, 1895, merely two months after his arrival in the U.S. Having no formal education, he was placed in an ungraded class reserved for immigrant children, who had to learn English from scratch. Gibran caught the eye of his teachers with his sketches and drawings, a hobby he had started during his childhood in Lebanon.
Gibran's curiosity led him to the cultural side of Boston, which exposed him to the rich world of the theatre, Opera and artistic Galleries. Prodded by the cultural scenes around him and through his artistic drawings, Gibran caught the attention of his teachers at the public school, who saw an artistic future for the boy. They contacted Fred Holland Day, an artist and a supporter of artists who opened up Gibran's cultural world and set him on the road to artistic fame...
Lebanese-American philosophical essayist, novelist, mystical poet, and artist.
Gibran's works were especially influential in the American popular culture in the 1960s. In 1904 Gibran had his first art exhibition in Boston. From 1908 to 1910 he studied art in Paris with August Rodin. In 1912 he settled in New York, where he devoted himself to writing and painting. Gibran's early works were written in Arabic, and from 1918 he published mostly in English. In 1920 he founded a society for Arab writers, Mahgar (al-Mahgar). Among its members were Mikha'il Na'ima (1889-1988), Iliya Abu Madi (1889-1957), Nasib Arida (1887-1946), Nadra Haddad (1881-1950), and Ilyas Abu Sabaka (1903-47). Gibran died in New York on April 10, 1931 at St. Vincent Hospital. In the autopsy he is said to have suffered of "Cirrhosis of the liver with incipient tuberculosis in one of the lungs." His body, after sometime in Boston, was returned to Lebanon and laid in the chapel of Mar Sarkis, an old monastery carved in a rock near Bsharri.
Among his best-known works is THE PROPHET, a book of 26 poetic essays, which has been translated into over 20 languages. The Prophet, who has lived in a foreign city 12 years, is about to board a ship that will take him home. He is stopped by a group of people, whom he teaches the mysteries of life.
Gibran K. Gibran: Work is Love Made Visible
Listen to GIBRAN KHALIL GIBRAN in his Masterpiece, THE PROPHET:
Then a ploughman said (to the Prophet): Speak to us of Work.
And he answered, saying: You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life‚ procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else signs together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth, furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, And in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labor is to be intimate with life‚ inmost secret.
But if you, in your pain, call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.
You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself and to one another and to God.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with you, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.
But I say, not in sleep but in the over wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
June 19, 2008
The Distant Future
S†MoN® says:The Distant Future: It is Closer than You Think
The animation industry is about to take another leap forward in the development quality of realistic images. In the near future, more advanced techniques will allow the use of high poly models. The differences will be astounding. Other major innovations are underway which will allow artists to create visual simulations that will become a true virtual reality to the users.
Most people have played a video game and have said to themselves: "Wow, that character is realistic!"
Imagine doing that when the character has natural looking tears and droplets of sweat emitting from the pores of their skin.
The technology for advanced gaming is tied directly to the innovations that are occurring in the field of animation. The motion picture industry will spend as much money on one animated movie as the U.N. will spend on AIDS research during a given year. This enormous amount of money is allowing companies like Alias, XSI, Discreet, and Newtek to spend large amounts of capital on R&D. This driving force is behind many of the innovations that have made movies like "Finding Nemo" and "Shrek". New movies with even more advanced and arguably better animation quality are out.
Pear’s new movie "Cars", released in 2006, was a frontrunner in displaying many of these new technologies and techniques. Another fascinating movie that was made by Fathom studios is called "Delgo"*. This may indicate that one of the major innovations of animation technology is the new ability of smaller organizations, and even eventually individuals to make feature link films.
* Delgo is an upcoming animated feature film by the independent Atlanta-based Fathom Studios. Delgo's release has been postponed several times (pre-production began in 1998) in part due to the death of Anne Bancroft (one of the lead voices)
Some aspiring individuals and groups are already putting this theory into practice. Many of these films and commercials are available on the internet and are free to view and enjoy. The innovation exists out there.
When you look at some of these films sequences, you will see that the new crop is tending to have more and more elaborate textures and models. The lighting is becoming more reactive and realistic. The models are not yet high poly in video games for instance, but they are tending to be in animation. Soon we will all have some very nice entertainment to look forward to. I look to the day when John Wayne will again take to the silver screen and say "saddle up". Arnold Schwarzenegger “will be back!”.
3D animation future is brighter. It will make the execution process faster. The age of computing has not even begun. What we have today are tiny toys not much better than an abacus. Traditional computing, with its ever more microscopic electric circuits fixed in silicon, can take us only so far:
Moore's Law* dictates that the amounts of computing power you can squeeze into the same space will double every 18 months.
* Moore's Law describes an important trend in the history of computer hardware: that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every two years. The observation was first made by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore in a 1965 paper. The trend has continued for more than half a century and is not expected to stop for a decade at least and perhaps much longer. Almost every measure of the capabilities of digital electronic devices is linked to Moore's Law: processing speed, memory capacity, even the resolution of digital cameras. All of these are improving at (roughly) exponential rates as well. This has dramatically changed the usefulness of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy. Moore's Law describes this driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
3D animation will be somehow cheaper. It could go as low as half a filming budget. Soon enough, we will say goodbye to cast, wardrobe, location, and all the risks that might occur on a single shoot. You can create a whole scene under the rain without getting wet. And build a devastating car crash set without a single slightly injured stunt.
End Note
Science fiction, right? Sure - just like satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. To some, this scenario is conservative. Ask scientists to predict how technology will change the world over the next 20 years or so, and their imaginations go wild. Our grand-children will barely realize the good fortune they, and the world, have inherited.
I Love Life?
S†MoN® says:
"He loves Life. I don't? He is a millionaire. I am not. He has 2 or 3 nationalities. I don't. He is smart. I am not? He has 5 cars or more. I don't. He never gets hungry. I do."
"Our National Anthem starts on a wrong foot [Koulouna lil Watan...]. Could it be half of us? Or some of us? Apparently, it is very few of us".
June 18, 2008
Persuasive Advertising
S†MoN® says:
"This print ad was published 5 years back in Al Riyadh, a Saudi newspaper. No further detail is necessary".
Searching Research
S†MoN® says:
Research isn’t science.
Here’s how advertising works: You toil for weeks to come up with a good solution to your client’s problem. Then your campaign is taken to an anonymous building on the outskirts of town and shown to a “focus group” – people who’ve been stopped on the street the previous week, identified as target customers, and paid a small amount of money for their opinion.
After a long day working at their jobs, these tired pedestrians arrive at the research facility and are led into a small room without windows or hope. In this barren, forlorn little box, they are shown your work in its half-formed state while you and your client watch through a two-way mirror.
Here’s the amazing part. These people all turn out to be advertising experts with piercing insights on why every ad shown to them should be force-fed into the nearest shredder fast enough to choke the chopping blades.
Yet who can blame them? They’ve been watching TV since they were kids and have been bored by 100,000 hours of very, very bad commercials. Now it’s payback time, Mr. Madison Avenue Suspenders Man. And because they’re seeing mere storyboards they think, wow, we get to kill the beast and crush its eggs.
Meanwhile, in the room behind the mirror, the client turns to you and says, “Looks like you’re working the weekend, Idea Boy.”
Welcome to advertising.
A committee, it has been said, is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and quietly strangled. The same can be said for the committee’s cousin, the focus group. But this research process, however wildly capricious and unscientific, is here to stay.
Clients are used to testing. They test their products. They test locations for their stores. They test the new flavor, the packaging, and the name on the top. And much of this testing pays off. So don’t think they’re going to spend a couple of million dollars airing a commercial based solely on your sage advice: “Hey, business dudes, I think this spot rocks.”
Used correctly, research is great. What better way is there to get inside the customer’s head? To be what Marshall McLuhan called the “frog men of the mind” and find out what people like and don’t like, to understand how they live. There is no better way. Most of the good research isn’t done in little buildings outside of town, either, but right downtown in the bars, asking drinkers about their favorite booze; asking shoppers how they choose a product; eavesdropping on real people as they walk about a category brand.
The point is, the best people in the business use research to generate ideas, not to judge them. They use it at the beginning of the whole advertising process to find out what to say. When it’s used to determine how to say it, great ideas suffer horribly.
Should your work suffer at the hands of a focus group, and it will, there isn’t much you can do except appeal to the better angels of your client’s nature.
What follows are some arguments against the reading of sheep entrails. Or the subjective science of copy testing.
Testing storyboards doesn’t work.
Testing, by its very nature, looks for what is wrong with a commercial, not what is right. Look hard enough for something wrong and you’ll sure enough find it. (I could stare at a picture of Miss November and in a half hour I’d start to notice, is that some broccoli in her teeth? Look, right there between the lateral incisor and the left canine, see?)
Testing assumes people react intellectually to commercials, that people watching TV in their living rooms dissect and analyze these interruptions to their sitcoms. (“Honey, come in here. I think these TV people are forwarding an argument that doesn’t track logically. Bring a pen and a paper.”) In reality, you and I both know their reactions are visceral and instantaneous.
Testing is inaccurate because storyboards don’t have the magic of finished commercials. Would a focus group approve this copy had it just been read to them? “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your nose.” Probably not. I can just see a focus group putting down his doughnut to protest: “I hate those chestnut things. And also, who wants to sing about wind chill? Can’t the song be about something happy?” But the fact is, millions of people have been charmed into buying this simple holiday song after hearing the recorded version.
Testing rewards commercials that are derivative because commercials that have a familiar feel score better than commercials that are unique, strange, odd, or new. The very qualities that can lift a finished commercial above the televisions clutter.
If tone is important to a client, testing is inaccurate because 12 colored pictures pasted to a board will never communicate tone like actual film footage, voice-over, and music.
Testing, no matter how well disguised, asks consumers to be advertising experts. And invariably they feel obligated to prove it.
Finally, testing assumes we really know what makes a commercial work and that it can be quantifiably analyzed. It can’t. Not in my opinion. It’s impossible to measure a live snake.
Bill Bernbach said, “We are so busy measuring public opinion, we forget we could mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics that we forget we could create them.” This simple truth about advertising is lost the minute a focus group sits down to do its business. In those small rooms, the power of advertising to affect behavior is not only subverted, it’s reversed. The dynamic of a commercial coming out of the television to consumers is replaced with consumers telling the commercial what to say.
I say, big deal if a group says your storyboard doesn’t reflect their opinions. With a good director and a couple of airings on the right programs, their opinions may reflect your commercials.
These arguments, for what they are worth, might come in handy someday, especially if you have a client who likes the commercial you propose, but has to defend poor test scores to a management committee.
Extensive research has proven that extensive research is often wrong.
From a book called Radio Advertising by Bob Schulberg, I bring to you this research study to your attention:
J. Walter Thompson did recall studies on commercials that ran during a heavily-viewed mini-series, “The Wind of War.” The survey showed that 19 percent of the respondents recalled Volkswagen commercials; 32 percent, Kodak; 32 percent, Prudential; 28 percent, American Express; and 16 percent Mobil Oil. The catch is that none of these companies advertised on “The Wind of War.”
In the mid-‘80s, research told management of the Coca-Cola Company that younger people preferred a sweeter, more Pepsi-like taste. Overlooking fierce customer loyalty to this century-old battleship of a brand, they reformulated Coca-Cola into New Coke, and in the process packed about $1 billion down at a rat hole.
“We forgot we could mold it.”
Research people told writer Hal Riney that entering the wine cooler category was a big mistake. Seagram’s and California Cooler had it locked up. Then Riney began running his Bartles & Jaymes commercials and a year later his client had the Number 1-selling wine cooler in America.
“We forgot we could mold it.”
Research people told writer Cliff Freeman when he was working on Wendy’s hamburgers, “Under absolutely no circumstances run ‘Where’s the Beef?’ ‘ After it ran, sales shot up 25 percent for the year and Wendy’s moved from fifth to third place in fast-food sales. The 20,000 newspaper articles lauding the commercial didn’t hurt either.
“We forgot we could mold it.”
And what some call the greatest campaign of the twentieth century, Volkswagen – none of it was subjected to pre-testing. The man who helped produce that Volkswagen campaign had a saying: “We are so busy measuring public opinion, we forgot we can mold it.”
Because focus groups can prove anything, do they prove anything?
British ad star Tim Delaney, in a famous article on the value of intuition, wrote:
Have you noticed what happens when five agencies are competing for an account? They all come up with completely different strategies and ideas – and yet, miraculously, each of them is able to prove, through objective research, that their solution is the right one. If nothing else does, this alone should devalue the currency of focus groups. Researchers think that if you send a lot of time analyzing a problem beforehand, it will bring you closer to the advertising solution. But the truth is, you only really begin to crack advertising problems, as you get deeper and deeper into the writing. You just have to sit down and start writing on some kind of pretext – and that initiates the flow of ideas that eventually brings a solution. In my agency, we start writing as soon as possible, before the researchers have done their analysis. And we usually find that the researchers are always trailing behind us, telling us things we already thought of.
The writing itself is the solution to the problem. It’s in the writing itself that the answers appear, when you’re in there getting your hands dirty mucking about in the mud of the client’s marketing reality. The answers are right there in that place where there’s direct contact between the patient and the doctor. And if the doctor has a question about how to proceed, who would you want him to ask for advice? A focus group of grocers, lawyers, and cab drivers? Personally, I’d want it to be another doctor.
I have a friend who walks around the agency trying to find out if a concept he’s done is any good. He keeps going around until the “it’s cool” votes outnumber the “it sucks”. Sometimes he doesn’t get the answer he wants and keeps working.
You know what? In my opinion, it’s the only pre-testing that works. The agency hallway.
Science cannot breathe life into something. Dr. Frankenstein tried this already.
David Ogilvy once said that research is often used the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination. It’s research used to protect preconceived ideas, not to explore new ones.
Another way that research can be used poorly is what I call “Permission Research.” Permission Research happens when agencies show advertising concepts to customers and ask if they like them or not. (“Can we air this? Oh, please?”)
What’s unfortunate about permission Research is that clients and agencies to validate terrible advertising often use it. Yes, it all looks and sounds like science, but as prudent as such market inquiries appear on the surface, the argument is specious. Because the very process of Permission Research and all its attendant consensus and compromise will grind the work into vanilla.
As an example of what the process of Permission Research can do, I cite an interesting and very funny study done in 1997 by a pair of Russian cultural anthropologists – Komar and Melamid. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, these two researchers set out to ask the public, “What makes for a perfect painting? What does a painting need to have in order for you to want to hang it in your home?”
They did massive amounts of research, hosting hundreds of focus groups all over the world. Their findings, meticulously prepared and double-checked with customers, were as follows: 88 percent of customers told them, “We like paintings that feature outdoor scenes.” The color Blue was preferred by 44 percent of respondents. “Having a famous person” in the painting got the thumbs up from a full of 50 percent. Fall was the preferred season. And animals! You gotta have some animals.
All this research was compiled and a painting was commissioned. The final “art” that came out of the lab (to nobody’s surprise) was very bad.
The point? Research is best used to help craft a strategy, not an execution. As journalist William F. Buckley once observed, “You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters.”
Market research is like the weather forecast: You’ve got to take it into account, but you can’t trust it.
Market research is one obvious way in which we try to get a grip on the shape of the market, just as the weather forecast is one way we try to get a grip on the likely ‘geography’ of a yacht race. The weather forecast is useful, but it won’t tell you how to win a race. It can occasionally be very inaccurate and is only ever a guide to likely conditions. Your competitors probably have the same information.
Exactly the same limitations apply to market research as to weather forecasts. We should treat all qualitative and quantitative information in the same way in terms of its predictive ability. The lesson is that, although we should have a point of view, we need to be prepared to deal with times when things are not to be as we thought they would be.
"We stand in our shadows and wonder why it is dark".
End
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