If you have had a gut check moment in recent memory Seth Godin's post about intuition vs. analysis will be interesting to you. In it he reminds us of the simple Devil's advocate role that so many of us play in reviewing new ideas. Never have I seen this negative spin used so harshly as in the Marketing process. Getting out of the office and running away to Belgium was the best move I made in my on-the-job marketing training program in the Global 1000.
Get outside the office and into customer's offices and suddenly a lot of ideas that sounded too outside the box at home, are well within the wrapper in the greater world. It was so easy after spending weeks looking at customer segmentation graphics to think I knew what they wanted to buy. I didn't know squat.
Data, especially expensive consultant provided data, on a large group of customers is always backward looking. A lagging indicator will almost always discourage innovation, who would launch a horseless carriage venture when buggy whip sales have been looking like a hockey stick lately? But don't trust me, after all I have stock in flying cars.
I wish I knew where my brain gets it's ideas from. Really, I have no idea what is going on between my ears. It's like a line from the song "Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab for Cutie
Cause in my head there’s a greyhound station
Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations
So they may have a chance of finding a place
where they’re far more suited than here
Deepack Chopra suggests that new ideas are received by the brain, but come from our minds which are outside of our current space-time coordinates. Terry Pratchett writes about ideas zipping randomly around the universe like neutrinos wrecking havoc when they collide with a brain. These two should get together, my gut says they have something. But don't trust me, after all I studied astrophysics, yoga, judo, and the Tao, lived in the UK, and love to read tongue in cheek fantasy, why wouldn't I like Chopra and Pratchett?
The old phrase, "Put yourself in the other person's shoes", should be tattooed on the feet of anyone calling themselves a marketing guru. The bit everyone forgets is to go find those shoes, not just sit in a cozy cubicle and read reports about shoe trends, average shoe sales, and shoe demographics.
Go look for the shoes, here in Austin, look for the presence of shoes.
Do a sole check then trust your gut.

