Trust Your Gut.

Today's Marketing Cookie asks the question of whether marketers should listen to their intuition or ignore it. I've had the pleasure of meeting Kevin Clancy, who co-wrote an award-winning book, "Your Gut is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head". Mr. Clancy taught me that marketing has traditionally been gut-driven, undisciplined, and often unaccountable. He explained that disciplined marketing is important in every crucial type of marketing decision. I was convinced! I believed that if I had the data to back up my decisions, it would always prove to be better than trusting my emotion.

On the other hand, Steve Jobs said, “You have to trust in something— your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

Steve did everything based on gut. In fact, when asked if he used focus groups to design revolutionary products, he said, "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

Although, I still use numbers, testing, and measurement to choose my next marketing moves, I sometimes wonder if perhaps my gut is smarter than my head, too. If Steve had ignored his intuition, and gave preference to the focus group results, we'd all still be using mobile phones with dozens of tiny buttons and slide-out keyboards. Maybe what came forth from inside Steve has saved us all.