Very smart and entirely cool--lovely demo of lateral thinking in teaching, not just ideating. Was particularly fascinated by the Wald story because, reading more, he overcame the principle every freshman philosophy student learns to be unalterably true--the impossibility of proving a negative. Exactly, as it happens, what makes putting your sage advice to work in an era toxically addicted to data-defined certainty so damned difficult.
The key is one of the lines in the Wiki retelling: when the Statistical Research Group, Wald’s war fighting home base, made a recommendation, “it usually happened.” Meaning they could not only conclude that the real signal was coming from the planes that didn’t make it back, but then test putting armor on the engines, with the empirical delta either confirming or disproving his premise.
So then, in an epic comedown from WW2 brilliance, I start thinking about a fact that’s caught my attention of late--how many of the most successful ads in history tested at the bottom of their category norms.
And maybe that because of what the data couldn’t see, therefore couldn’t measure, without giving it wings and letting it fly IRL.
Those examples generally saw the light of day because of intangibles like agency conviction and client trust, but you open another door--the value of having conversations about the analytics not in evidence, and the “opposite” signals we should be thinking about in following our guts.
And let's not forget 1948 world speed record holder Rollie Free. When Rollie couldn't make his motorcycle "Black Lightning" go any faster he made himself more aerodynamic and that made all of the difference.
Inspired me to create and collect some thinking stories of my own.
I think 🤔 I may also know this other inspiring ex-ad guy Dave 😉
Thank you ✏️
Great post. I’m collecting.
Very smart and entirely cool--lovely demo of lateral thinking in teaching, not just ideating. Was particularly fascinated by the Wald story because, reading more, he overcame the principle every freshman philosophy student learns to be unalterably true--the impossibility of proving a negative. Exactly, as it happens, what makes putting your sage advice to work in an era toxically addicted to data-defined certainty so damned difficult.
The key is one of the lines in the Wiki retelling: when the Statistical Research Group, Wald’s war fighting home base, made a recommendation, “it usually happened.” Meaning they could not only conclude that the real signal was coming from the planes that didn’t make it back, but then test putting armor on the engines, with the empirical delta either confirming or disproving his premise.
So then, in an epic comedown from WW2 brilliance, I start thinking about a fact that’s caught my attention of late--how many of the most successful ads in history tested at the bottom of their category norms.
And maybe that because of what the data couldn’t see, therefore couldn’t measure, without giving it wings and letting it fly IRL.
Those examples generally saw the light of day because of intangibles like agency conviction and client trust, but you open another door--the value of having conversations about the analytics not in evidence, and the “opposite” signals we should be thinking about in following our guts.
And let's not forget 1948 world speed record holder Rollie Free. When Rollie couldn't make his motorcycle "Black Lightning" go any faster he made himself more aerodynamic and that made all of the difference.
https://vimeo.com/preservationproductions
Love it! Adding it to my collection
Loved this!
Thanks for reading
I like all of what you say. We must not fetishize the data. Use it. And also see what’s not in the numbers. Thanks for reading.