This post from 2013 is a hopeful one about declining overt bias found in polling. While we have had reasons to worry in the intervening years I still stand by the idea that declining overt bias is a good thing. We may not be perfect. I think this is pretty obvious to all, but, at…
Winning And Political Marketing
Winning and political marketing go together like curry and naan. You can have one without the other but it isn’t ideal. As a former political party Finance Director I would have cried if someone had suggested deliberately not using the best techniques we could to win. (More robust staff would probably have washed the person’s…
Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a major problem for human beings. No, things weren’t better when you were a kid. You just didn’t notice the problems. The Better Angels of Our Nature If the past is a foreign country, it is a shockingly violent one. It is easy to forget just how dangerous life used to be, how deeply brutality…
Net Promoter
One of the most interesting discussions about marketing metrics in recent years concerns the Net Promoter System/Score, (NPS). Net Promoter Net Promoter is very simple. It compares % of customers who give high scores on “would you recommend to a friend?” with % of customers who give low scores. The Net Promoter is just the…
Kahneman’s Gripe
Marketing draws heavily on psychology and economics. I feel that both disciplines have much to offer (as well as weaknesses). So it is without any specific agenda that I agree with Daniel Kahneman’s “gripe”. Kahneman’s Gripe Agreeing with Kahnema might not seem brave. Kahneman is a Nobel prize winner. I’d say a good rule of thumb…
The Problem Of Overfitting
Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise has much to recommend it. It is about prediction generally, rather than being focused specifically on baseball or politics where he built his reputation. He also notes challenges with statistical models, specifically the problem of overfitting. The Problem Of Overfitting A problem Silver addresses is the overfitting of mathematical…
Surviving Paranoia
I don’t like Paranoia. Excessive fear of other people is a major social problem and encouraging it is just plain wrong. We need to concentrate on getting past it, surviving paranoia. Do Only The Paranoid Survive? Thus I’m not a fan of Andy Grove’s “Only the Paranoid Survive” (Grove 1996). It is not that there…
Are We Good Decision Makers?
An interesting debate in the decision-making field is: Are we good decision-makers? The Debate: Are We Good Decision Makers? This debate occurs most contentiously between supporters of Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman and those in Gerd Gigerenzer’s camp. Supporters of Tversky and Kahneman argue that in the 1970’s the core assumption in social science was…
A Taxonomy Of Nudging
One of the most popular ideas in the behavioural sciences at the moment is “nudging”. This is applying a light touch to encourage people towards certain actions. People often are a little unclear on what a nudge is. As such it is helpful to have a taxonomy of nudging. What Is A Nudge? What Then…
Marketing And The Republican Autopsy
The Republican’s recently issued an interesting competitive analysis of how the party’s marketing operations stack up. [Published in 2013]. The Growth and Opportunity Project has been dubbed the “Republican Autopsy”. This basically accepted that the 2012 national elections were a disaster for the party. So what can we learn from marketing and the Republican autopsy? Criticism…
