How bad are our guesstimates?
Sometimes atrocious, it turns out.
We have to make educated guesses & rough estimates all the time. Sometimes those guesses are wildly off.
For instance, Pew points out that almost every year for the past 24 years, Americans have said that "there is more crime than a year ago." Which means crime should be on a 24-year increase.
Instead, violent crime has been on a huge 24-year DECLINE. (Other crime has dropped too and just as much.)
All kinds of biases are at play: what the news reports (“if it bleeds, it leads”), what kinds of events we remember (scary stuff sticks more), even racial bias: neighborhoods are perceived as more dangerous — by both whites & Blacks — if young black men live there.
As a marketer, this makes me think 2 things:
1. Check our guesstimates! Our perceptions are often wildly off. So try to make educated and informed guesses, not uneducated ones. Google it!
2. Accept that our customers (and partners) might have wildly-off perceptions of our brands & categories. Not always, but possibly. So it’s important to gauge their perceptions, and also do what we can to impact them (if we need to).