Richard:
Maybe I’ve yet to work with a strong marketing department, but I typically find most marketing studies and marketing people (like sales) are too often focused on the past (what has been done), vs. the future (what could be done).
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. There are a lot of things that are not influenced by past results that people try to predict by past results. Here is an article about how many people are willing to pay for “tips” on flipping a coin.
The worst part is that it’s not just average chumps. I can’t find the stat now, but someone asked each US congressman what the chance of flipping heads was after 4 consecutive times the coin landing on heads was. Half the congressman stated a 1 in 16 chance.
Of all the “webinairs” and blog posts and TED talks…I would definitely pay to hear one talking about effective ways of getting this insight across to decision makers.