Marketing is full of misguided analogy

It was Harvard Business School marketing professor, Theodore Levitt, that said: "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"

Hands up if this saying has been quoted to you in a workshop on more than one occasion.

And yes, this one...along with countless others...sounds reasonable, logical and true, but the real motivation of customers is simply not as simple as this.

The statement may be true...some of the time, but it's certainly not science.

Some people actually want to buy, and own, a quarter-inch drill.

Owning a drill gives them a sense of purpose.

They love the experience of drilling into a wall...the noise, the vibration, the sense of pride they feel when the drilled holes line up perfectly.

They want to tell their friends about the drill, that has pride of place in their workshop toolset. The drill, for them, offers far more value than simply a perfect hole.

Theodore Levitt's statement sounds confident, but it's bullshit.

It's tempting to want to apply simple analogues in an effort to understand and codify complex phenomena, but accurately capturing reality in this way isn't possible. And in the comfort of believing the analogy, the door for 'the surprising outlier' is left ajar.

The point is that some people will try to sell you simple solutions to complex problems, but simple solutions don't take into account nuance and context.

Good marketing requires proper analysis, foresight work and strategy.